Love Begins with the Hot Summer

The day they buried my son, Leo, the sky was a cruel, perfect blue. He was four. A hit-and-run. The car was a cherry-red convertible. The driver was Karyn Morse.

I stood by the small, open grave, the scent of fresh dirt thick in the air. My husband, District Attorney David Blair, had his arm around me, a pillar of strength for the cameras that flashed from a respectful distance. We were the city' s power couple, now the city' s tragic story.

My grief was a hollow thing, a vast, silent cavern inside my chest. I wanted to scream, to fall into the earth with my son, but my body was frozen.

Then she arrived.

Karyn Morse, dressed in a white linen dress that stood out against the sea of black suits, walked toward us. Her father, the real estate mogul Dick Underwood, followed a few steps behind, his face a mask of grim propriety. He was David' s biggest campaign donor.

She didn' t stop at a distance. She walked right up to the grave, peering in as if it were a curiosity at a museum.

A murmur went through the crowd. My hand, holding a single white rose for Leo, began to shake.

Karyn looked up from the grave, her eyes, cold and vacant, meeting mine. She smiled, a small, sharp thing.

"Such a shame," she said, her voice carrying on the light breeze. She reached into her designer handbag and pulled out a small, plush dinosaur-Leo' s favorite, the one he' d lost at the park last week. The one I' d been searching for everywhere.

She dangled it over the open grave.

"He dropped this, you know," she said conversationally. "Right before. Clumsy little thing."

Then, she let it go.

The green dinosaur fell, landing softly on the polished wood of my son' s tiny casket.

Something inside me snapped. The silent cavern of my grief filled with a hot, roaring rage. My whole body trembled. David' s grip on my shoulder tightened, a warning.

But I couldn' t stop. I took a step forward, my voice a raw whisper.

"You killed him."

Karyn' s smile widened. "The police cleared me, Eva. It was a tragic accident. You should have been watching him more closely."

I would get justice. I was an investigative journalist. I knew how to dig, how to find the truth and expose it to the light. I would use the law, the system my husband represented, to put this monster where she belonged.

The preliminary hearing was a media circus. I sat in the front row, my best friend and colleague, Cheri Reid, beside me. Cheri squeezed my hand, her face a mirror of my own disbelief.

"She' s the daughter of Dick Underwood," someone whispered behind me. "David' s main backer. No way she sees the inside of a cell."

I didn' t care. I had evidence. A traffic cam photo, grainy but clear enough. A witness who saw a red convertible speeding away. I had spent weeks piecing it together, doing the work the police seemed so reluctant to do. I had built a case so solid, not even Dick Underwood' s money could tear it down.

I was Eva Benton. My exposé on city hall corruption had won a Pulitzer. I had brought down powerful men before. This spoiled, soulless woman would be no different.

But she was.

The judge, a man who owed his position to Underwood, dismissed the evidence. The witness recanted his testimony. Karyn Morse walked free without a single charge.

The room spun. I felt Cheri' s arm steady me. It wasn' t over. I would appeal. I would find more.

Then the bailiff called my name.

"Eva Benton, you are under arrest."

I stared, confused. On the prosecutor' s table, a new file appeared. My husband, David Blair, stood up. He wouldn' t look at me.

"For the criminal negligence leading to the death of your son, Leo Blair," the judge read, his voice flat.

They put me on trial. My own husband, the man I had built a life with, the man who was Leo' s father, prosecuted the case against me. He used my grief, my frantic calls and sleepless nights after the accident, as evidence of an unstable mind. He twisted my journalistic inquiries into a paranoid obsession. He claimed I wasn' t watching Leo, that I was on my phone, distracted, negligent.

Cheri was called to the stand. Her eyes were full of tears. She testified that I had been overworked, stressed, not myself. It was a betrayal so sharp, it stole the air from my lungs.

They played up our image-the perfect power couple, shattered by the wife' s carelessness. It was a better story. A cleaner story for a man about to run for mayor.

David' s closing argument was a masterpiece of charisma and feigned sorrow. He spoke of a justice system that must remain impartial, even when it tears a man' s own heart out.

He looked at me then, for the first time. His eyes were filled with a pain I almost believed.

The jury found me guilty.

Three years.

They gave me three years in a maximum-security prison. For being a grieving mother. For losing my son.

The three years were a blur of concrete and gray uniforms, of violence I learned to survive and a hollowness that never left. I lost a pregnancy in a brutal fight I didn' t start, another secret I locked away. All I did was survive, fueled by a single, burning question I wrote in a thousand letters David never answered: Why?

The day I was released, the sky was a hazy, indifferent gray. I didn' t go to a halfway house. I took a cab to the one place I needed to see. My son' s grave.

I expected it to be unkempt, a testament to my absence. But it was pristine. Fresh flowers, a small, polished stone angel at the headstone.

As I stood there, a familiar car pulled up. A black sedan.

David got out. He looked older, more powerful. He was the mayor now.

He wasn' t alone.

Karyn Morse stepped out of the passenger side, her hand possessively on his arm. And from the back seat, a nanny helped a small child, a boy, maybe three years old. He had David' s dark hair and Karyn' s sharp features.

They walked toward the grave, a perfect family unit.

The boy ran ahead and hugged David' s leg.

"Daddy, can we go get ice cream now?"

Karyn smoothed the boy' s hair. "In a minute, sweetie. We have to say hi to your brother."

My mind went blank. The world dissolved into a roaring white noise.

Brother.

Daddy.