Adam scratches behind his ear.
“It could have been me. Or my wife.”
He’s smart. Obviously he understands what’s happening here. All he has to do is keep a cool head. Think of your family, Adam. Think of Stella and me.
“You don’t know?” Jansdotter asks.
“We have a fire pretty often.”
“In the summer? The first days of September? When it’s seventy degrees outside?”
“We think it’s cozy.”
The prosecutor sighs loudly.
“Isn’t it true that you found Stella’s bloody blouse and burned it in the woodstove?”
“Absolutely not,” Adam says. “I did not burn any blouse.”
No, he didn’t.
93
When the presiding judge concludes the first day of proceedings, I stand up and manage to catch Stella’s eye before the guards take her away. We look at each other for a second or two. I reach out my hand; it fumbles in the air. This is the moment when I must be a real mother; I must compensate for what I never managed to do when Stella was little. This time I’m doing what I’m best at. Please, Stella, you have to trust me.
In the past few years, our relationship has slowly improved. While Adam found it increasingly difficult to understand Stella’s various life choices, I have become closer to her; I have come to understand my daughter better and better. To some extent I have Amina to thank. It was through her that I was finally able to meet Stella on her own terms. Through Amina, I learned to understand.
Naturally, it has pained me to find that I have an easier time talking to Amina than to Stella. That guilt has constantly lain at the bottom of my soul like a heavy layer of sludge. At times when I found it impossible to make sense of Stella’s actions, reasoning, and motives, I have seen my own driving forces reflected in Amina.
“Stella’s not like you and me,” she once said. “Stella’s just Stella.”
This was soon after Stella quit handball. One day she was at a gathering with the national youth team, where she was predicted to have a dazzling future; the next she was putting her handball shoes up for sale online. Adam and I were befuddled.
“You can’t understand Stella unless you start to think like Stella,” Amina said.
It sounds so simple, so obvious—and yet it’s not.
“Stella can’t deal with other people trying to control her,” Amina said. “At this level, handball is so much about running preplanned plays, stuff we’ve practiced over and over. Stella can’t handle that.”
I think Adam was the one who suffered most for never having more children. He has his crosses to bear. He bashed himself bloody, trying to force Stella to live up to our expectations instead of accepting her for who she is. It’s a wonder our family didn’t crumble to pieces. I try to see what is currently happening as a chance to start over, a new opportunity I intend to seize at any price.
“Why can’t you be more like Amina?” I once said when Stella had gone off the rails, turning the world around her upside down for the umpteenth time in a row.
For once she had no withering response. She just fell silent. She looked at me, and although her eyes were perfectly dry, it was as if she were crying.
She knew what I meant, of course. The words just slipped out of me—only one time, never again—but Stella saw right through me. She saw the way I looked at Amina, the way I talked to her, how we shared something.
I caught Stella up in my arms and cried on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
It was pointless, of course. We both knew exactly what I meant.
* * *
As I walk out of the courtroom, Adam is nowhere in sight. The benches in the lobby are occupied by strangers. I take a few steps down the hallway, but there’s no Adam.
Where is he?
Just a moment ago he was sitting in court, swearing before God that his daughter was at home when that man lay bleeding to death on a playground in another part of the city.
He has to be on the verge of a breakdown.
My heart pounds and I take a few long strides into the next hallway. I find him outside the bathrooms. He’s hunched on a bench, looking as if every bone in his body is broken.
“Honey,” I whisper, “I’m so proud of you.”
I put my arm around him. His body feels hard and cold. I cautiously lean against his shoulder and a gentle warmth branches through my chest. Stella and Amina aren’t the only ones I’m doing this for.
“What if it doesn’t help?” His gaze is a desperate plea. “What have I done?”