I cleared my throat, determined to keep my spirits up. “What made you decide to practice?”
He gave me a smile but it faded as he spoke. “I like the law. I like how black and white it can be. Words on paper that last and have power.” He plucked a few blades of grass, tearing them from their roots. “I want that power to protect people from what happened to my family.”
“What happened?”
Sawyer seemed to be struggling to find the words, or whether to speak them at all.
“No, you don’t have to tell me,” I said gently. “I do that. I pry.”
“You’re not prying,” Sawyer said. “You’re making conversation. Something I’m not very good at lately.”
I smiled. “You’re doing fine.”
He smiled back but it was flimsy and faded quickly. “I don’t talk about this very much. Or ever, actually.”
I itched to touch him. “You don’t have to.”
“No, I should, I guess. For her sake. My mom died in a car accident when I was a kid,” he said all at once, then swallowed. “She was killed by a drunk driver.”
My hand flew to my throat. “Oh my God, Sawyer. I’m so sorry. How old were you?”
“Eight,” he said. “My little brother, Emmett, was four. Worst fucking day of our lives.”
My eyes stung with tears at the sudden image of two little boys learning they no longer had a mother. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, as if he could minimize the whole thing, but I could see the pain behind his deep brown eyes. A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“Anyway, the guy who killed her had been arrested twice before,” he said, his voice hardening. “And both times he pled before a judge he wouldn’t do it again, that he’d cleaned up his act. The prosecutor was weak. He didn’t push hard enough. Three weeks after his latest release from jail for DUI, the guy drove his truck—on a suspended license—into my mom’s car as she was coming home from work.”
I shook my head. “That’s so awful.”
“I don’t like talking about it, and I don’t want to write it about it, either, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Judge Miller has asked us to write a brief about a personal incident in our lives and how we’d handle it as prosecutors.”
“Judge Miller, this is the guy you’re trying to have a clerkship with?”
Sawyer nodded. “And I plan to write about my mother, but it makes me so fucking angry and…”
“Hurt?” I offered gently.
Sawyer shrugged. “I don’t have time to hurt. Maybe that’s my problem. Miller told me I lack feeling.” He scoffed. “I have no idea what that means. Law doesn’t have feelings. It has direction. It tells you where to go and what comes next.”
“But that’s not how life is,” I said.
Sawyer’s head shot up. “What did you say?”
“Life has no guide map. Things happen and people react, and no two people will do the same thing.” Now I plucked at the grass at the edge of the blanket. “Some people are beyond saving, like that asshole who…killed your mom. But not everyone is like that.”
“He was given plenty of chances,” Sawyer said darkly. “He threw them away.”
“So you don’t believe in second chances anymore?” I asked, my voice sounding high and tight in my own ears.
Sawyer watched me for a minute, his dark eyes full of thoughts. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. It shouldn’t be about what I believe. It should be about what I can do. The law failed my mom. I’m going to make sure it doesn’t fail anyone else.”
“He sounds nice, this Judge Miller,” I said after a moment. I plucked another blade of grass.