Every Last Fear

by Alex Finlay

How gracious, after more than two decades with the company. Keller felt a surge of anger. Evan had a family, four kids, and they’d unceremoniously shown him the door.

There was a pardon board made up of the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state.

The kind of woman who saw promise in everyone, underpaid and overworked, but delighted to be there.

stylish brown hair with chestnut highlights. Keller was surprised at her outfit.

When Keller was a girl, it was the landline telephone, meeting at the mall or roller rink. Now they stayed connected through tiny screens.

It was always the affluent, the well-educated, who lawyered up—or in this case, parented up. They’d been exposed to lawyers, or studied Miranda in their AP Government classes, or had been schooled by America’s biggest educator on police procedure and the Bill of Rights, Law & Order.

the sheep spends its life worried about the wolf, only to be eaten by the farmer.

She never had trouble with alpha males. She’d grown up with one, and understood that the alpha-ness was born of their own insecurities.

These men who loved to tell women to stop being so emotional were in fact the ones who let their emotions control them.

She was still an attractive woman, but she wasn’t getting any younger. And

She didn’t want to admit it, but her looks had always been a big part of her identity. What would she be when they were gone? When the kids were gone? Then

He gazed at her, marveling that he’d helped produce such an amazing person. He’d

But none had sent fire through him like Jessica Wheeler. He was glamorizing it all, he was sure. Why was it, he wondered, that we do that? Rosy up memories and make them idealized versions of what really happened.

As a girl she’d been sweet, empathetic. It was what had attracted him.

Some people remember vividly where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. Or when the space shuttle Challenger blew up. Or when Princess Diana’s car crashed. Or when the planes struck the Twin Towers. Memories formed under intense emotions are seared into our thoughts, branded by the hot iron of trauma.

Politics. It didn’t matter how big or small, it usually was dirty.

But she’d felt so powerless, so scared,

so ashamed.

And not the new white-shoe appellate lawyers the Adlers found too boring to carry the documentary’s sequel.

“No, really, sit down, relax, the womenfolk have got this,”

they held hands, bowed heads, and Olivia said grace.

Liv liked the beach as much as the next person, but it was hard going with a six-year-old. There was no relaxing. It was either worrying about drowning, incessant trips to the bathroom, or being forced into sandcastle-making hell.

At that moment, he was in the football bleachers holding Liv’s hand on a cold Friday night in October, the kids—Matt, Magpie, and somehow even Tommy—sitting beside them cheering at the spiral that had just connected and won the game. The quarterback tore off his helmet, his eyes searching the stands until he found them, pointing at Evan

and his family, as if it were all for them.

And i...

The governor’s predecessor, Noah Brawn, would be spending the rest of his days in a cell at the very prison where Danny was first incarcerated.

Kids: You have my whole heart. You always did.