Sorrow Road by Julia Keller Page B

stone’s throw of the Raythune County Courthouse, in the shadow of which diversity did not exactly flourish.
    Still, Rhonda was a bright woman, and usually an open-minded, wide-souled one, and Bell was disappointed in her. Bell consoled herself with the thought that everyone had to start somewhere.
    â€œExplain,” Bell said curtly.
    â€œYou just naturally assume,” Rhonda said, starting again, but haltingly, “that it’s because they can’t get a boyfriend or a husband, right? And so they finally just give up and get involved with each other as a kind of—well, I mean—”
    â€œAs a kind of what?”
    â€œAs a kind of substitute. Next best thing. But your friend—she was really pretty. And this woman…” Rhonda gestured toward the stack of printouts she’d left on Bell’s desk. “This woman’s a brain surgeon, for heaven’s sake. And she’s attractive, too, if those photos got it right. Bet she doesn’t have a lick of trouble finding men who want to go out with her. But somehow the both of them ended up…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
    Bell did it for her. “They ended up with each other. By conscious choice. Not desperation.”
    â€œTotally.” Rhonda looked relieved. “So you do get what I mean.”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œCome on, Bell. You know the point I’m trying to make.”
    â€œMaybe you’d better enlighten me.”
    Her assistant looked around the room dismally. She was clearly regretting the topic she had introduced. Major blunder. She’d just remembered that Bell, despite being born and raised in Acker’s Gap, was not really One of Them. Bell had started out that way—but then she left. When she came back, she wasn’t anymore. That was how it worked.
    Bell read the sentiment right off Rhonda’s distressed face. And waited.
    â€œOkay, fine,” Rhonda said, peeved at being put on the spot. “But would you ever want to be in a relationship with a woman?”
    Bell smiled. “Sorry, but I’m already spoken for. Anyway, I don’t believe in workplace romances.”
    â€œNo—wait—I didn’t mean…”
    Bell let her sputter and blush for a few seconds. Then she reached for a file folder on the far side of her desk. She opened it. “Let’s get back to work.”
    For the next hour they went over the latest developments in the county’s case against a man named Charles Leroy Vickers. The charge was aggravated assault. There was a simpler phrase for the fancy label “aggravated assault,” Bell had learned after her first few years as a prosecutor in these parts: using a broken-off beer bottle during a bar fight. The trial had been postponed several times. First Vickers grabbed his gut in his jail cell one day, claiming illness; his attorney demanded that he be hospitalized. After several weeks of tests and Jell-O, Vickers decided that he was feeling much better, thanks. Next came a string of frivolous motions by the defense. “It’s like they think we’ll just get frustrated and give up and go away,” Rhonda had said last week, as she and Bell went over strategy. The Vickers case was the first one that Rhonda had been assigned to handle all on her own—not as second chair to Bell or Hick Leonard.
    Now there was a new trial date—a week from today in Judge Tolliver’s courtroom. “Unless,” Rhonda said, as she accepted the transcript of a deposition that Bell was handing her, “Charlie-boy gets a toenail fungus and we have to wait for him to heal up.” She had read this transcript multiple times already. She had made notes about her notes. And then more notes about those notes.
    â€œPretty good chance you’ll actually be starting next week,” Bell said. “You feel ready, right?”
    â€œI’ve been ready for three