She had a practice. Two years of building it. Client by client. She had people depending on her. She could not absorb what a protracted legal fight with Hector Walters resources would do to a small firm that was still finding its footing.
She was sorry. She was genuinely, deeply sorry. But she could not formally testify. Latimer delivered all of this in the same steady, unhurried way she delivered everything. And when she finished, the office was very quiet.
Zoe looked at the desk between them. At the 12 pages of legal language. At the framed track team photograph on the wall. At her own hands resting on her knees. She pressed both palms flat against them.
The grounding technique Robert had taught her when she was 10 years old and overwhelmed. The physical act of feeling something solid beneath your hands when everything else felt like it was moving. She breathed in through her nose. Out through her mouth. Her voice, when it came, barely moved the air between them.
So we have nothing. Latimer looked at her for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice carried the particular weight of someone who has not given up and needs you to understand that. "Not nothing," she said. "We have the truth.
We just need one more thing. " Zoe looked up. "What? " "Proof that this school already knew about Brody Walter. " Latimore's eyes were steady and direct. "And chose Hector Walter's money anyway. " The office was quiet again. Zoe pressed her palms harder against her knees. Then she nodded.
She drove home Sunday evening with the windows down and the radio off. Three hours from Caldwell to Westside Atlanta. And Zoe spent most of it watching the highway unspool in front of her headlights and not thinking about legal documents or forum posts or Dean Preston's smooth, regretful voice. She let the road do what roads do when you need them to. Give you something to follow that doesn't require decisions, just movement.
Her mother was waiting. Not in an obvious way. Divine Okerson did not stand at windows watching for headlights. Did not come out to the curb when she heard tires on the street. She was just there when Zoe came through the door in the kitchen, moving between the stove and the counter with the quiet efficiency of a woman who expressed most of what she felt through the act of feeding people.
The apartment smelled like rice and stewed chicken, Robert's favorite, which Divine still made on Sundays the same way she always had. She looked at Zoe's face when she came in and didn't ask any questions. Just set a plate on the table. They ate together and Zoe told her mother some of it. Enough.