A good Samaritan minor.
Olivia stares at the words for a full minute. She finds Daniel Hayes at his fire station off Tryon Street; he is on his lunch break. He remembers Bryce immediately:
"Skinny kid, yeah. Hoodie, beat-up backpack. He stayed with that lady over an hour, ma'am. Held her hand while we stabilized her. Didn't ask for a ride home, didn't ask for his name in any report. Most grown men don't do what that kid did. I'd testify to that in any courtroom in this state."
Olivia drives back to the office and calls Tanisha. "Mrs. Bennett, we have a witness. We have a 911 call. We have a hospital record. I can't promise you a win, but I can promise you we are no longer alone in this."
On the other end of the line, Tanisha Bennett finally lets herself cry—the loud kind. In the bedroom, Bryce hears it. And for the first time since the cuffs almost touched him in that pawn shop, he lets his shoulders come down.
Saturday afternoon. The motion is filed. The district attorney's office is reviewing. The hearing is set for the following Thursday. The charges have not been dropped, but they have not been pressed forward, either. And for a public defender three years out of law school, that is a small open door where there used to be a wall.
Olivia takes Bryce and Tanisha to a snow-cone stand on the corner of West Trade. It is the first sunny afternoon in a week. Tanisha orders a strawberry. Olivia gets blue raspberry. Bryce takes a long time choosing because he hasn't had ice from a stand since his last birthday, and he wants to choose right. He picks rainbow.
They sit on a low brick wall outside a closed barber shop. The sun is doing that late October thing where it's bright, but not warm. Bryce eats his rainbow and gets blue around his mouth and laughs at himself in the side mirror of a parked car. Tanisha laughs, too. She hasn't laughed in eight days; the sound surprises her.
She turns to Olivia, who is sitting beside her with her cone tilted so it doesn't drip on her work pants. "Miss Olivia."
"Just Olivia."
"Olivia." Tanisha's voice goes quiet. "You're the first person who looked at my son like he was a son."