It was a shock to hear his voice again after all these years.
“She has requested me as a public defender.”
“What?”
I was bewildered. Stella had requested Michael as her attorney?
“Does she know who you are?” I had asked as he drove Adam and me home later that night.
“Of course.”
This was so typical of Stella. She knew that my relationship with Michael had extended beyond the professional; she had heard us speaking on the phone, and that was why she had now requested him as her defense.
Because surely it wasn’t the case that she knew? That she realized Michael would break confidentiality and involve me?
It was a dreadful decision, leaving Stella in the dark about all that was going on, abandoned in a jail cell. I felt so sick about it that I finally asked Michael to arrange a visit so I could explain, but Stella refused and I didn’t dare to entrust Michael with making her understand. There was no other way out. If I were to succeed in saving both Amina and Stella, this had to go to trial. The stakes were terribly high. I was risking my daughter. My family.
* * *
On Sunday afternoon, just after the police searched our house, Amina came to see me. Adam was being interrogated by the police, and when he called I bought time by claiming that there were still technicians in the house.
Once we’d made our decision, Amina took out a plastic bag she’d had hidden inside her jacket. She explained that she had found the bag in a trash bin at the playground, and I knew at once what it contained.
We got in the car and drove straight to the quarry in Dalby, where I stopped and turned off the engine on a small gravel road.
I looked around anxiously before emptying the contents of the bag on the ground. Amina stood next to me, sniffling as I stomped Christopher Olsen’s phone to pieces.
“Yours too,” I said.
She looked at me, wide-eyed. Then she handed me her phone and I pried the SIM card loose with creeping-spider fingers before stomping it to pieces as well. I was wracked with agony, but there was no time to hesitate. At last I knew what was important, what really meant something. Here was my opportunity to prove it.
I stepped onto the cliff above the quarry, to the very edge, where the wall of rock plunged into the dark water that was so still it looked like a deep, black hole. I pulled on a pair of gloves, then threw the knife that had killed Christopher Olsen over the precipice. It sailed in a wide curve through the air, and the edge cleaved the silent water. The deep lake opened up and swallowed it with a slurp.
109
Adam takes a step back and almost crashes into the vending machine.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?”
The pain is enormous. At that moment, I regret everything. Not only do I risk losing my daughter—Adam won’t be there either.
“I did it for you. For my family.”
“And Amina?”
I nod.
“But I don’t understand. I saw with my own eyes that Linda Lokind had the same shoes as Stella. And she followed her that night.”
I drink up the last splash of water, crumple the bottle, and toss it in a trash bin.
“Linda Lokind didn’t kill Christopher Olsen,” I say. “Everything Linda said when she was trying to warn Stella off was likely true. Olsen subjected her to atrocious abuse.”
I take pains to really emphasize this last part. Perhaps I do so to convince Adam that he did the right thing? Perhaps it’s mostly to convince myself?
Adam still looks confused.
“But what about those Polish guys?”
“The ones from the pizzeria,” I say with a shrug. “They’re certainly petty thieves and swindlers, but they have nothing to do with Olsen’s death. They just wanted to keep their pizzeria in his building.”
Adam shakes his head.
“This is crazy,” he says. “Why didn’t Amina say anything? How could she let Stella endure this?”
I open my mouth, but my voice has vanished. Adam will never forgive me. He’ll never understand.
“And you?” he says. “You, too?”
This mostly sounds like a statement. I don’t hear any accusation in his voice.
“What won’t a person do for their child?” I say.
Adam gazes into my eyes. Maybe, I think. Maybe he can understand after all.
“I love you,” I whisper.
At last I know it’s true. That’s what I do. I love Adam. I love Stella. I love our family.
Then the loudspeakers crackle and we are summoned back into Courtroom 2.
* * *
Adam and I are holding hands. The benches of the gallery are nearly empty now. Many of the journalists appear to have assumed that the deliberations would drag on, and so have left the courthouse. Others must have expected no surprising news, reckoning instead that Stella would have to remain in jail pending sentencing at a later date.