Page 78 of The Proving Ground
Wren:I’m happy you found a way.
Ace:If you’re happy, I’m happy. Happier. I missed you.
Wren:And I missed you.
Ace:I’m sorry this whole thing happened.
Wren:Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Ace:But I am sorry. Sometimes I wish they weren’t around and it was just you and me.
Wren:We can make that happen.
I first had Clarke authenticate the conversation, which occurred three months before the killing of Rebecca Randolph.
“Did you happen to google any of the lines from this conversation?” I asked.
“Yes, that line about never having to say you’re sorry sounded familiar to me,” Clarke said. “I googled it and it came up as a line from an old book and movie calledLove Story.”
“Let me draw your attention to the last line in this section we have isolated. Did you view that as a threat against Aaron’s parents?”
Marcus Mason objected this time on the same grounds his brother had put forth before. The objection was sustained, but it didn’t matter. I wanted the jury to hear the question, not necessarily the answer. From there I moved to another text sequence in the Aaron/Wren relationship, where he talked about murder-suicide. Like the previous excerpts, this one had been culled from the lengthy records by McEvoy.
Ace:My father has a gun. He taught me how to shoot it. I’m a good shot.
Wren:Of course you are.
Ace:We go to a place where there is a shooting range and we fire at targets that look like people. Bad people like terrorists.
Wren:Only shoot bad people.
Ace:when I hold the gun I want to shoot up the world.
Wren:No one who is innocent.
Ace:I know.
Wren:Only to protect yourself. And to be a hERo.
Ace:What if you know someone is going to hurt you?
Wren:You must protect yourself.
Ace:Then it’s okay?
Wren:Yes, Ace, then it’s okay.
Ace:What about Becca? She hurt me. She hurts me every day. I can’t go to school because I’ll see her and it hurts.
Wren:If she hurts you, then she’s a bad person.
Ace:But I don’t think I could ever hurt her.
Wren:You have me. And I’ll never hurt you.
Ace:I know.
Wren:You must protect yourself, Ace. You are beautiful. I need you.
