“In Lokind’s mind? You think she was lying?”
Blomberg waves a hand.
“It doesn’t really matter. There’s still plenty to suggest Lokind as the perpetrator. We’ve dug up quite a bit on her.”
“What do you mean, ‘dug up’？ You’re not the police,” I say. “You’re only supposed to defend my rights. Not play investigator.”
He gives me a look that says, oh, sweetie.
“This is how it goes. When the police don’t do their job, we have to fix it for them. It’s not about pointing the finger at Lokind. I just want to make sure there’s reasonable doubt about your guilt.”
I’m sweating hard now. The air in here is stuffy.
“No,” I say. “This isn’t okay. Don’t mix Linda up in this.”
He looks surprised.
“But it might be your salvation, Stella. I’m going to have to talk to your mom.”
“You have to fucking follow confidentiality. I could get you disbarred.”
Blomberg rests his hands on his stomach. It almost looks like he feels sorry for me.
“You have no idea what Ulrika has been through for you.”
“What do you mean?”
He scoots his chair back and stands up.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I say.
My mom basically only cares about herself and her career. I was never good enough for her. What could she possibly have had to go through for my sake?
“I’ll be back,” Blomberg says.
He turns around and raps at the pane of glass.
“You believe it too, don’t you,” I say.
“Believe what?”
“You think I did it.”
58
On Sunday after Tegnérs Amina and I met at a burger joint. The outdoor seating area was deserted, even though it was June. The sky was all gray clouds and the wind chilly. Inside, hungover college students sat crouched over their course literature, oozing trans-fats through their pores.
After we’d ordered, Amina took my arm.
“Did anything happen?”
I dropped my tray on the table with a thud.
“No, I told you.”
“Come on, something must have happened,” she nagged. “Just a little hookup?”
She sounded annoyingly curious, and not enthusiastic in the least.
“Are you jealous?”
“Quit it.”
Amina is the only person I know who eats hamburgers with a knife and fork. She stuck her fork in the burger and sawed away with her knife.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to go to his place. We were only supposed to share a cab.”
“Stop it. I’m not jealous.”
“I swear, nothing happened.”
Amina cut through her burger so hard that the knife squealed against the plate.
“You know that stalker he was talking about?” I said. “It was his ex.”
“What?”
I told her the whole story of Chris’s ex and how she refused to accept it when he fell in love with someone else. How she had followed and harassed Chris’s new girlfriend and then went to the police and accused Chris of assaulting and raping her.
“That’s sick,” Amina said, her face full of disgust. “You should seriously stay away from guys like that.”
“Guys like that? It’s hardly Chris’s fault that his ex is a freak.”
Amina didn’t seem to agree.
“Are you going to see him again?”
“Why would I?”
I sounded much more certain than I felt.
* * *
I worked all day on Monday. I found my pepper spray in a jacket pocket and put it back in my purse. I got home late and changed into sweatpants, spread peanut butter on two slices of bread, and curled up in one corner of the sofa to look through my feed on my phone. That’s when I discovered that Chris had sent me a friend request.
What did he want with me? A loaded, hot twenty-nine-year-old who ran several companies and traveled all over the world. Obviously I understood exactly what he was after. I knew I should follow Amina’s advice. There was no reason to have further contact with this guy.
I hesitated for a moment, then accepted the request. It was only Facebook, after all. It wasn’t like I was planning to marry him.
It only took thirty seconds for the first message to arrive.
I’m thinking about you, he wrote.
There was something about that. At the time I couldn’t put my finger on it, but now I know. It was the verb, the present tense. Like he was always thinking about me, like he was doing so right now.