“Do we need to go get you checked out at the hospital?” I asked.
We were sitting across from each other on the benches, looking down at her hastily bandaged knee.
She shook her head.
“I just can’t do this anymore.”
She sounded utterly resigned.
“Do what?” I said.
“Swear you won’t say anything to Dad! He would never understand. Neither would Mom! Promise?”
Unaware of what I was doing, I gave her my word.
“Didn’t you see I messed up the defense? Two times, the exact same feint?”
I had to confess that I hadn’t noticed anything.
“And then I fumbled that last pass to Stella. You saw that, didn’t you?”
“But you’re ahead twelve to four,” I objected.
“Dad doesn’t care about that,” Amina said, staring down at the floor as she unwound the bandage from her knee with a few hasty movements. “I can’t handle being the best all the time. I just can’t deal with it.”
This struck a painful chord. I thought of how I had spent a whole life toiling away to keep from being a disappointment to others.
“It’s only handball,” I said. “It doesn’t mean a damn thing. Not really.”
“But it’s not just handball.” She gazed at me with glassy eyes. “It’s everything. School, friends, at home. I can’t do it anymore.”
Without thinking it over, I moved to sit beside her and opened my arms. Amina curled up like a small child and I rocked her slowly back and forth.
I had such powerful feelings for Amina, and I wasn’t sure how to act upon them.
Several years later, on a hellish Sunday in early September, I was faced with the impossible choice between Amina and my own daughter, and I chose both of them.
I’m afraid that choice may cost me everything.
97
Jenny Jansdotter patiently waits for Amina to speak. The entire courtroom is waiting for Amina. She is about to reveal everything.
“One night when we were at Tegnérs, I think it was in the middle of August, Stella got a headache and left early. I ended up going home with Chris.”
She takes a long pause and looks at Stella.
“We were really just supposed to share a taxi, but … we’d had quite a bit to drink, and…”
Amina swallows the last word and hangs her head. Stella looks at her in confusion.
“We sat on his sofa, chatting. I’d had too much to drink. It just happened.”
Stella glowers at her best friend, who is speaking down at the table.
“What happened?” Jansdotter asks.
“He tried to kiss me.”
“And what did you do?”
This is painful. Stella and Amina mean so much to each other. Can their friendship survive this?
“I let him do it.” Amina’s voice is faint. “He kissed me several times, until I panicked and said I had to leave. I ran out of there and on the way home I called Stella.”
“Did you tell Stella about the kissing?”
“No. I was going to, but then … I couldn’t.”
Stella slowly brings her glass of water to her lips and lets it hover in the air for a moment before taking a sip. Jansdotter is rolling her pen between her fingers.
“Did you see Chris again after this?”
“He called me, like, a week later. We were supposed to plan a surprise for Stella, because it was her birthday. So Chris picked me up in his car and we brought sushi back to his apartment.”
She stops, her hand to her forehead.
“Go on,” Jansdotter urges her. “What happened at his apartment?”
“He kissed me again.”
I watch Stella deflate and recall how we hugged that night, after her birthday dinner. Only recently have we begun to embrace each other that way. Naturally and sincerely. Adam was snoring on the sofa, his mouth wide open, and we were careful not to wake him. Stella sniffled out a brief account of what had happened after she left the Italian restaurant. And that was when it hit me. While I am far from a relationship expert, I figured out what Stella herself refused to see. The more she told me, the clearer it became. She’d had her heart broken. She was in love and had been betrayed.
“What did you and Christopher talk about that night?” the prosecutor asks Amina. “While you were alone?”
Amina sighs deeply.
“Chris said he liked me. I’m the one he noticed first at Tegnérs. He said he liked Stella too, but not the same way. He had begun to see her downsides. He realized that there would be problems, but he said you can’t help your feelings.”