2

“Yes.”

“And as the mother of a child this age, she would be aware of the development changes possible over the next few years?”

“Yes. In fact, I tried to tell Mrs. Frost that in a year or so, Nathaniel might be doing far better than she expected. That he might even be capable of testifying on his own behalf.”

The prosecutor nods. “Unfortunately, though, the defendant killed Father Szyszynski before we could find out.”

Quentin withdraws the statement before Fisher can even object. I tug on the edge of his jacket. “I have to talk to you.” He stares at me as if I have lost my mind. “Yes,” I say. “Now.”

I know what Quentin Brown is thinking, because I have seen a case through his eyes. I proved she murdered him. I did my job. And maybe I have learned not to interfere in the lives of others, but surely it’s my responsibility to save myself. “It’s up to me,” I tell Fisher in the conference room. “I need to give them a reason to say it doesn’t matter.”

Fisher shakes his head. “You know what happens when defense attorneys overtry a case. The prosecution has the burden of proof, and all I can do is pick holes in it. But if I pick too hard, the whole thing deflates. Put on one too many witnesses, and the defense loses.”

“I understand what you’re saying. But Fisher, the prosecution did prove that I murdered Szyszynski. And I’m not your average witness.” I take a deep breath. “Sure, there are cases where the defense loses because they put on one witness too many. But there are other cases where the prosecution loses because the jury hears from the defendant. They know horrible things have been done—and they want to hear why, right from the horse’s mouth.”

“Nina, you can barely sit still when I’m doing cross-exams, you want to object so badly. I can’t put you on the stand as a witness when you’re such a goddamned prosecutor.” Fisher sits down across from me, splaying his hands on the table. “You think in facts. But just because you’re telling the jury something doesn’t mean they’re going to accept it as reality. After all the groundwork I’ve laid, they like me; they believe me. If I tell them you were so overcome with emotion you were beyond rational thought, they’ll buy it. On the other hand, no matter what you say to them, they’re predisposed to think you’re a liar.”

“Not if I tell them the truth.”

“That you really meant to shoot the other guy?”

“That I wasn’t crazy.”

“Nina,” Fisher says softly, “that’ll undo your whole defense. You can’t tell them that.”

“Why not, Fisher? Why can’t I make twelve lousy people understand that somewhere between a good deed and a bad deed are a thousand shades of gray? Right now, Quentin’s got me convicted, because he’s told them what I was thinking that day. If I take the stand, I can give them an alternative version. I can explain what I did, why it was wrong, and why I couldn’t see that, then. Either they’ll send me to jail … or they’ll send me home with my son. How can I not take that chance?”

Fisher stares down at the table. “You keep this up,” he says after a moment, “and I may have to hire you when we’re through.” He holds out a hand, counting off on his fingers. “You answer only the questions I ask. The minute you start trying to educate the jury I’m yanking you off. If I mention temporary insanity, you damn well find a way to support it without perjuring yourself. And if you show any temper whatsoever, get ready for a nice long stay in prison.”

“Okay.” I leap to my feet, ready to go.

But Fisher doesn’t move. “Nina. Just so you know … even if you can’t convince that jury, you’ve convinced me.”

Three months ago, if I’d heard that from a defense attorney, I’d have laughed. But now I smile at Fisher, wait for him to come up beside me at the door. We walk into that courtroom as a team.

My office, for the past seven years, has been a courtroom. It’s a space that is intimidating for many people, but not for me. I know what the rules are there: when to approach the clerk, when to talk to the jury, how to lean back and whisper to someone in the gallery without calling attention to myself. But now I am sitting in a part of that office I’ve never been in before. I am not allowed to move. I am not allowed to do the work I usually do.

I’m starting to see why so many people fear this.

The witness box is so small my knees bump up against the front. The stares of a couple hundred people poke at me, tiny needles. I think of what I have told thousands of witnesses during my career: Your job is to do three things: Listen to the question, answer the question, and stop talking. I remember something my boss used to say all the time—that the best witnesses were truck drivers and assembly line workers because they were far less likely to run off at the mouth than, for example, overeducated lawyers.

Fisher hands me the restraining order I took out against Caleb. “Why did you procure this, Nina?”

“I thought at the time that Nathaniel had identified my husband as the person who’d sexually abused him.”

“What did your husband do to make you believe this?”

I find Caleb in the gallery, shake my head. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Yet you took the extraordinary step of getting a restraining order to prevent him from seeing his own child?”

“I was focused on protecting my son. If Nathaniel said this was the person who hurt him … well, I did the only thing I could to keep him safe.”

“When did you decide to terminate the restraining order?” Fisher asks.

“When I realized that my son had been signing the word father not to identify Caleb, but to identify a priest.”

“Is that the point where you believed Father Szyszynski was the abuser?”

“It was a lot of things. First, a doctor told me that anal penetration had occurred. Then came Nathaniel’s hand sign. Then he whispered a name to Detective Ducharme that sounded like ‘Father Glen.’ And finally, Detective Ducharme told me he’d found my son’s underwear at St. Anne’s.” I swallow hard. “I’ve spent seven years putting together pieces to make cases that will stand up in court. I was just doing what seemed absolutely logical to me.”

Fisher glares at me. Absolutely logical. Oh, damn.

“Nina, listen carefully to my next question, please,” Fisher warns. “When you started to believe that Father Szyszynski was your son’s abuser, how did you feel?”

“I was a mess. This was a man I’d trusted with my own beliefs and my family’s beliefs. With my son. I was angry with myself because I’d been working so hard—if I’d been home more, I might have seen this coming. And I was frustrated because now that Nathaniel had identified a suspect, I knew the next step would be—”

“Nina,” Fisher interrupts. Answer the question, I remind myself with a mental kick. Then shut up.

Brown smiles. “Your Honor, let her finish answering.”

“Yes, Mr. Carrington,” the judge agrees. “I don’t believe Mrs. Frost is done.”

“Actually I am,” I say quickly.

“Did you discuss the best plan of action for your son with his psychiatrist?”

I shake my head. “There was no best plan of action. I’ve tried hundreds of cases involving child victims. Even if Nathaniel started speaking normally again, and got stronger … even if there were a year or two before the case went to trial … well, the priest never admitted to what he did. That means it all hinged on my son.”

“What do you mean?”

“Without a confession, the only thing a prosecutor’s got against the defendant is the child’s testimony. That means Nathaniel would have had to go through a competency hearing. He’d get up, in a room full of people like this, and say what that man had done to him. That man, of course, would be sitting six feet away, watching—and you can be sure that he’s told the child, more than once, not to tell. But no one would be sitting next to Nathaniel and nobody would be holding him, nobody would be telling him it’s okay to talk now.

“Either Nathaniel would be terrified and fall apart during this hearing, and the judge would rule him not competent to stand trial—which means that the abuser would never get punished … or Nathaniel would be told he was able to stand trial—which means he’d have to go through it all over again in court, with the stakes cranked up a notch and a whole new set of people watching. Including twelve jurors predisposed to not believe him, because he’s only a child.” I turn to the jury. “I’m not all too comfortable here, now, and I’ve been in a courtroom every day for the past seven years. It’s scary to be trapped in this box. It’s scarring for any witness. But we were not talking about any witness. We were talking about Nathaniel.”

“What about the best-case scenario?” Fisher asks gently. “What if, after all that, the abuser was put in jail?”

“The priest would have been in prison for ten years, only ten years, because that’s what people with no criminal record get for destroying a child’s life. He would have most likely been paroled before Nathaniel even hit puberty.” I shake my head. “How can anyone consider that a best-case scenario? How can any court say that would protect my son?”

Fisher takes one last look at me and requests a recess.

· · ·

In the conference room upstairs, Fisher crouches down in front of my chair. “Repeat after me,” he says.

“Oh, come on.”

“Repeat after me: I am a witness. I am not an attorney.”

Rolling my eyes, I recite, “I am a witness. I am not an attorney.”

“I will listen to the question, answer the question, and shut up,” Fisher continues.

If I were in Fisher’s shoes, I would want the same promise from my witness. But I am not in Fisher’s shoes. And by the same token, he isn’t in mine. “Fisher. Look at me. I am the woman who crossed the line. The one who actually did what any parent would want to do in this horrible situation. Every single person on that jury is looking at me and trying to figure out whether that makes me a monster or a hero.” I look down, feeling the sudden prick of tears. “It’s something I’m still trying to figure out. I can’t tell them why I did it. But I can explain that when Nathaniel’s life changes, mine changes. That if Nathaniel never gets over this, then neither will I. And when you look at it that way, sticking to the testimony doesn’t seem quite as important, does it?” When Fisher doesn’t answer, I reach as far down inside me as I can for whatever confidence has been left behind. “I know what I’m doing,” I tell Fisher. “I’m completely in control.”

He shakes his head. “Nina,” he sighs, “why do you think I’m so worried?”

“What were you thinking when you woke up the morning of October thirtieth?” Fisher asks me, minutes later.

“That this would be the worst day of my life.”

Fisher turns, surprised. After all, we have not rehearsed this. “Why? Father Szyszynski was about to be arraigned.”

“Yes. But once he was charged, that speedy trial clock would start ticking. Either they’d bring him to trial or let him go. And that meant Nathaniel would have to get involved again.”

“When you arrived at the courthouse, what happened?”

“Thomas LaCroix, the prosecutor, said they were going to try to clear the courtroom because this was such a high-profile case. It meant the arraignment would be delayed.”

“What did you do?”

“I told my husband I had to go to the office.”

“Did you?”

I shake my head. “I wound up at a gun shop, in the parking lot. I didn’t really know how I’d gotten there, but I knew it was a place I was supposed to be.”

“What did you do?”

“I went in when the store opened, and I bought a gun.”

“And then?”

“I put the gun in my purse and went back to court for the arraignment.”

“Did you plan what you were going to do with the gun during the drive?” Fisher asks.

“No. The only thing on my mind was Nathaniel.”

Fisher lets this lie for a moment. “What did you do when you arrived at the courthouse?”

“I walked in.”

“Did you think about the metal detectors?”

“No, I never do. I just walk around them because I’m a prosecutor. I do it twenty times a day.”

“Did you purposefully go around the metal detectors because you were carrying a gun in your purse?”

“At that moment,” I answer, “I was not thinking at all.”

I am watching the door, just watching the door, and the priest is going to come out of it at any moment. My head, it’s pounding past the words that Caleb says. I have to see him. I can’t hear anything but my blood, that buzzing. He will come through that door.

When the knob turns, I hold my breath. When the door swings open, and the bailiff appears first, time stops. And then the whole room falls away and it is me and him, with Nathaniel bound between us like glue. I cannot look at him, and then I cannot look away.

The priest turns his head and, unerringly, his eyes find mine.

Without saying a word, he speaks: I forgive you.

It is the thought of him pardoning me that breaks something loose inside. My hand slides into my purse and with almost casual indifference I let it happen.

Do you know how sometimes you know you are dreaming, even while it occurs? The gun is tugged forward like a magnet, until it comes within inches of his head. At the moment I pull the trigger I am not thinking of Szyszynski; I am not thinking of Nathaniel; I am not even thinking of revenge.

Just one word, clamped between the vise of my teeth:

No.

“Nina!” Fisher hisses, close to my face. “Are you all right?”

I blink at him, then at the jury staring at me. “Yes. I’m … sorry.”

But in my head I’m still there. I hadn’t expected the recoil of the gun. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Kill a man, and you will be punished.

“Did you struggle when the guards fell on top of you?”

“No,” I murmur. “I just wanted to know he was dead.”

“Is that when Detective Ducharme took you into the holding cell?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say anything to him back there?”

“That I didn’t have any choice. I had to do it.”

Which, it turns out, was true. I had said it, at the time, to deliberately sound crazy. But what those psychiatrists have testified to is technically accurate—I had no conscious control of my actions. They are only wrong in thinking that this means I was insane. What I did was no mental illness, no psychotic break. It was instinct.

Fisher pauses. “You found out some time later that, in fact, Father Szyszynski was not the man who sexually abused your son. How did that make you feel?”

“I wanted to be put in jail.”