I reach into my purse and extract the folder containing the affidavit. “If you do, they’ll only be obligated to enforce this.” Rebecca refuses to release the storage box long enough to take the file from me, so I lay out the broad strokes. “This is a sworn document from Miss Cannon, listing the items she is entitled to inherit as the registered domestic partner of Ruth Wachowsky.”
At that, Rebecca rips the document from my hands, leaving me with matching paper cuts. I hiss under my breath as her eyes go immediately to the items listed. She snorts rudely. “Well, I don’t have what she’s after.”
“If you’ll keep reading,” I say, “I think you’ll find that there is no use lying about that.”
Rebecca scans the language frantically. I know the moment she locates it—undeniable proof that the assets in question were released to her—because her whole body goes slack. It is the response from my old law school friend confirming the identity of the person who requested Carl’s recording after the Lake Sammamish case was closed, as well as a copy of the release form, denying public access to the file, as was the family’s legal right to make in a case where there was no conviction. The confession tape is distinctively human, hereditarily one of a kind. There are no copies made, no more chances after this.
“We intend to keep the recording only long enough to have a copy made for my client,” I tell her. “She is willing to return the original to you.”
Rebecca lets the pages of the affidavit float to the ground. She folds her body over the storage box, resting her cheek on its hard angles as if it’s a pillow. She is taking deep, noisy yoga breaths, whimpering a little on the exhale.
“You have our word that we will return the original to you,” I assure her.
“Well, I don’t want it.” Rebecca weeps petulantly. “Not once she has it too.” She looks up at me, snot-nosed and furious. “I knew Ruth since we were three years old. I knew her.”
“Our goal is to stay out of the courts with this,” I say in the curated tone I use in highly emotional mediations several days a week, “but the only way to do that, and to ensure your husband does not find out about your relationship with his sister, is if you are willing to cooperate.”
“I’m giving it to you,” Rebecca snarls. “Okay? It’s just—” She is holding on to that box like it is a raft in the middle of the Atlantic. “It’s like there’s never been any room for how I feel. The only time I don’t have to hide how much I miss her is when I’m down here.” She gestures. Here, this basement where Allen’s old Atari still sits on the cabinet with the chipped corners, all the remnants of the life she never really wanted packed up and put away, no longer sparking joy, if they ever did in the first place. I am blazing with contempt for Rebecca. You had your chance, I think, to make room for yourself, but you were too much of a coward.
And I might have been too, were it not for Tina. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have become a lawyer even if The Defendant had blundered into a different sorority house that night, but it would have been a passionless practice, something I did to try and connect with my father because I had no real connection with myself. Instead, I have lived the last forty-three years with purpose, not in spite of what happened in the early-morning hours of January 15, 1978, but because of it.
It is only fair that I take from Rebecca what rightfully belongs to the person who helped me live so well with my pain.
* * *
Rebecca lives in one of those neighborhoods with an active Nextdoor community, people who get dogs just to have an excuse to patrol the neighborhood a few times a day and post about it online. God, I sound paranoid, Tina said with forced, nervous laughter. Before she dropped me off at Rebecca’s curb, she pointed out the nearby convenience store where she would wait for me. She was worried about Rebecca spotting her and doing something crazy, like ripping out the reel with her teeth.
When I approach the QuikTrip parking lot, Tina is sitting in the driver’s seat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed. For a moment, I am sure she is dead, that the ping-ponging worry over which way this will go has triggered a massive heart event. I rap a knuckle on her window lightly, not wanting to give her one of those if she is in fact only meditating.
Tina’s shoulders draw up with an exhale, so I know she’s alive, even though she’s too scared to open her eyes. I start nodding so that yes is the first thing she sees. Yes, I got it. Yes, it’s over.