Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1)

dish at some point, and her house wasn’t that far out of the way. Dropping by would let me see if that’s where Noah had gone.
I wrapped the dish in a towel and drove over. Mazie lived on the far edge of town, right on the marsh, with a distant ocean view obscured by clouds of mosquitoes. She’d come down in life since high school, when we had dated. I’d gone off to college, and she’d followed the same sad path so many did: pregnant by some loser, a mother before she was twenty, and it never got better from there. I couldn’t blame Jackson for being troubled.
I parked on the dirt road out front. Their rental was vinyl-sided hurricane bait, hardly more than a trailer. I made a mental note that if we had any big storms this season, I’d invite them to stay on an air mattress in our living room. At least we were a little ways inland.
She answered the door in a flurry, distracted, tying on her waitress apron.
“You just go on through to the kitchen,” she said, heading back into what must’ve been her bedroom. “I’m running late. There’s coffee on the counter. Help yourself.”
From the room down the hall I heard thrash metal, muffled only slightly by the closed door. Jackson was evidently home. His taste in music didn’t blend well with the modern country playing on the kitchen radio. I reached out to turn the radio off, thinking that even muffled metal might be better than the clash of both songs playing at once, but stopped before touching the dial. It wasn’t my house; I should mind my own business.
Mazie walked in as I was putting her casserole dish away. Seeing her gave me déjà vu. She’d waitressed during high school too, and even though that place no longer existed, there was only so much variety in waitress uniforms.
As I closed the cabinet door, she said, “Aw, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Looks like you’re in a hurry,” I said. “Didn’t want you to take the time. It was delicious, by the way. Thank you much.”
“You’re very welcome.” With a little smile she added, “That boy of yours is too dang skinny anyway.”
“Well, you sure are helping him fill out.” I saw her glance at the clock; her hectic face got slightly calmer, so I figured she must have a little time. “Why don’t you set here a moment? I can pour you a cup.”
“That’d be nice,” she said. “Especially since I’ll be pouring other people’s coffee all day long.”
When she got close enough, sitting down on the other side of the Formica counter, I could see she looked exhausted. The kitchen faced the ocean, and the morning light wasn’t kind.
“Everything okay?” I asked. “I know my boy comes around a lot. You let me know if it’s too much.”
She waved that off. “No, it’s fine,” she said. “He was here this morning, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
I must’ve looked a little embarrassed, because she added, “I’m a mother. We worry. Good parents, I mean, not just mothers. I know what it’s like.”
I shook my head at the strangeness of parenthood, wishing for about the millionth time that Elise were still here. When she was sober, she was one of the best mothers I’d ever seen. That line of thought wasn’t anything I’d share with Mazie, so I said, “Yeah, by the time you start getting the hang of whatever phase they’re in, it’s over and they’re in a new one.”
A flick of her eyebrows said, “Ain’t that the truth.”
“So what phase is yours in now?”
She exhaled, a sound of pure frustration. “When his bike was in the shop, that boy racked up so many parking tickets I’m still paying them off. Had to take extra shifts to keep the car from getting impounded.”
“Surely he doesn’t make you pay them all?”
“No, he pays what he can. Thank the Lord he’s got that job at the hardware store.”
“Oh, I thought—wasn’t he at the burger place on the beach?”
“Last summer, yeah. When winter came he got in with the hardware store, and it just worked out better. But, you know, to get there on time he’ll drop me off and then park wherever and run on in. He ain’t working today, otherwise we would’ve had to leave ten minutes ago.”
“Any chance Karl could help out with the tickets?” Karl was the loser who’d gotten her pregnant way back when.
She gave a bitter laugh. “You kidding me? Him?”
“I mean, even if it ain’t his car, it’s still his son. And, I thought, he owes you big time for raising Jackson.” I wasn’t privy to details, but Karl didn’t seem like the kind who’d pay regular child support.
“Forget it,” she said. There was anger in her voice that I’d never heard before. “I ain’t seen him since last week, and he was about as bad as he’s ever been. I’d do double shifts the rest of my life before I’d ask for money from him.”
I figured that meant Karl had fallen off the wagon again. I was trying to think of something to say when Jackson came out of his room. Or so I inferred from the fact the thrash metal stopped and I heard a door slam.
As heavy steps shook the cheap flooring, Mazie called out, “Baby? Don’t leave without breakfast. Come on in here. I got a few minutes to make you something.”
Jackson loomed in the doorway. He was tall, and nearly as skinny as Noah. He wasn’t a bad-looking kid, although the black eye he was sporting didn’t enhance things any. I’d seen enough crime-scene photos to know the greenish color meant the injury was at least a few days old. I wondered what had happened. Noah hadn’t mentioned anything, but then I wasn’t exactly his confidant.
Jackson grunted hello, went to the cabinet, and grabbed two packs of Pop-Tarts from a box. He was wearing what I assumed was a band T-shirt. It was