The Green Line (36 page)
“Hi Abby.”
She took a breath and turned to face the voice she knew so well. “Hi.”
“How are you?” He looked serious.
Sarah put her arm around Abby. “She’s great.”
Abby smiled. “Yeah. Everything’s good.”
“I’m so glad.”
She knew she had to say something. “David, I’m sorry about that crazy scene at the courthouse on Monday.”
“I just came from a meeting with Robert Duvane. Looks like I’ll be prosecuting those officers. Abby, I can’t believe what you’ve been through. I wish I’d known.”
She didn’t know what to say. Everyone was connected.
David turned to Sarah and Rick. “You said this is a celebration?”
“Yes,” Sarah raised her glass. “To Neil’s rise to partnership,” she offered with sarcasm.
Abby raised her glass. “Sarah and Rick’s return is the real cause for celebration.”
Sarah raised her glass even higher. “No, we’re really celebrating Abby’s bad-ass survival skills!”
“Hear, hear!” Everyone agreed and took a sip.
David turned to Abby again. “Neil’s a partner? How do you feel about that?”
“Great, actually.”
“Really?”
“We’ll be back,” Sarah blurted. She grabbed Rick by the arm and headed off to the other end of the bar.
David sat on the stool next to Abby. She nervously took another sip of her beer.
“Are you really okay with Neil becoming a partner?”
Abby put down the glass and finally met his eyes. “I know it’s a surprising answer. But a lot has happened. He can have it.” She felt lost in his eyes; she wanted to come clean but she couldn’t. “And you? I hear that congratulations are in order for you too?”
“For what?”
“For your pending marriage?”
He looked at his beer. “Oh that.” He opened his mouth to speak but didn’t.
Abby wondered if she should even ask.
David took another sip and then looked at Abby. “That’s not going to happen.”
Abby could feel the rush of red to her cheeks. “What?”
He relaxed back into his chair. “We broke up at Sarah’s wedding.”
“Really?”
“She said she could tell it wasn’t over between you and me. She said I was staring at you all night.”
Abby couldn’t look away. She stared into his eyes and took a deep breath before she responded. “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.” They both took a sip from their beers. David continued: “You want to know something else?”
Abby sat up taller. “What’s that?”
“I was at the Blue Note last Friday.”
“What?”
“When you sang?”
Abby covered her face. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Abby, don’t be.” He pulled her hands from her face and held them. “I think I saw more of you that night then you let me see in years. You were amazing.”
Without knowing it, he gave her the courage. She looked into his eyes. “I’m so happy you’re not engaged.”
“And why’s that?”
She took another sip and continued. “Because I want you to spend the rest of your life with me.” She was shocked at her own bravado, but refused to turn away. “If you still want to.” She waited for a response.
David was obviously flustered and hardly knew how to react. “Either you’ve had a lot to drink or a lot has changed.”
She gestured to the full beer in front of her. “Well, this is my first beer, so I guess a lot has changed.” Abby looked into those light blue eyes and could see the love was still there.
Author’s Note
I
began writing
The Green Line
in 2004 when my oldest child was just three years old. He’s now eleven. It’s been an arduous, exciting, invigorating, and exhausting adventure. I can still remember my elation after sharing the first few chapters with my writers group. Their encouragement and interest in the story, the way they spoke of my characters as if they were real people, fueled me to keep going. But there were many stops and starts, many days when I thought I should just toss the whole thing and give up. When I finally finished the story, it felt like the biggest accomplishment of my life, that is until I began the quest for publication and soon realized that I still faced a long and difficult road.
So many writers helped me along the way. My sincere thanks go to Karen Osborne, D.C. Brod, Julia Buckley, Cynthia Quam, Martha Whitehead, Kathi Baron, and John Pogue. Their feedback, insight, tips, and encouragement carried me though the ups and downs. I’d also like to thank Win Golden of The Julia Castiglia Agency. Her enthusiasm for the project gave me confidence that publication was not just a pipedream. She offered helpful criticism that only made my work better. Many thanks also go to Richard Klin for his editorial eye and Gwen Gades and Derek Murphy for their beautiful design work. Finally, I thank my family. My husband, parents, siblings, and even my kids gave me unwavering support and encouragement to keep writing, to never give up, and to do whatever necessary to get the book published.
The seeds of this story were planted more than a decade ago. Living in Chicago for much of my twenties, I was a constant traveler on public transportation. I once sat as a silent hostage and watched as three young men verbally terrorized a fellow passenger for no other reason than their own amusement. It was a crowded train, but every one of us, all witnesses to the rudeness, the insults, the unbelievable vulgarity, feared them and did nothing. Another time, an older, mentally unstable woman looked into my eyes and uttered the words I used on the first page of this story: “If I had me a gun, I’d just shoot all them white people.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, my rides were safe and uneventful, but I never forgot those moments, and after unintentionally boarding the Green Line once in the middle of the day, back when I didn’t know Chicago well and knew only that I was headed toward the most dangerous parts of the city, I wondered what might have happened if it had been late at night.
Though I don’t share much with Abby Donovan, there are a couple of parallels. I, too, was an associate at a large law firm in downtown Chicago and I researched and wrote a law review article about civil forfeiture that was published in the late 1990s. I read countless stories and cases of innocent owners who were stripped of personal property with no due process. It was shocking to me that we actually have laws on the books that disregard the guilt or innocence of property owners, laws that are fully enforceable and utilized by law enforcement all over the country. Though Congress passed a reform bill in 2000 that improved the situation in some cases, there are still countless disturbing elements of this widely-used procedure.
Finally, Chicago’s numerous law enforcement scandals over the last several decades were great sources of inspiration while researching and writing this story. Of course the story is fictional, and my assumption is that the vast majority of police officers are, in fact, the good guys, but soon after finishing
The Green Line
, a Chicago Tribune article reported on the sentencing of a former officer in conjunction with one of the worst misconduct scandals in the department’s history. The officer, and nearly a dozen other officers, had assisted in stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from suspected drug dealers and others after making illegal traffic stops or illegal property searches. Though the officer faced up to thirteen years in prison, he and the majority of others involved received less than six month sentences.
About the Author
E.C. Diskin lives in Oak Park, Illinois,
with her husband and two kids.
This is her first novel.
For more information,
go to www.ecdiskin.com
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by E.C. Diskin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, contact Wells Street Press: www.wellsstpress.com.
While the author has made every attempt to provide accurate Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Text design: Gwen Gades
Cover design: Derek Murphy
Cover photo: David Pirmann
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