3
“Do you still feel that way?” Fisher asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
In that instant, my eye falls on the defense table, where neither Fisher nor I are sitting. It is already a ghost town, I think. “I did what I did to keep my son safe. But how can I keep him safe when I’m not with him?”
Fisher catches my eye meaningfully. “Will you ever take the law into your own hands again?”
Oh, I know what he wants me to say. I know, because it is what I would try to draw from a witness at this moment too. But I have told myself enough lies. I’m not going to hand-feed them to this jury, too.
“I wish I could tell you I never would … but that wouldn’t be true. I thought I knew this world. I thought I could control it. But just when you think you’ve got your life by the reins, that’s when it’s most likely to run away with you.
“I killed someone.” The words burn on my tongue. “No, not just someone, but a wonderful man. An innocent man. That’s something I’m going to carry with me, forever. And like any burden, it is going to get heavier and heavier … except I’ll never be able to put it down, because now it’s a part of who I am.” Turning to the jury, I repeat, “I would like to tell you that I’d never do anything like this again, but then, I never thought I was capable of doing anything like this in the first place. And as it turned out, I was wrong.”
Fisher, I think, is going to kill me. It is hard to see him through the tears. But my heart isn’t hammering, and my soul is still. An equal and opposite reaction. After all this time, it turns out that the best way to atone for doing something blatantly wrong is to do something else blatantly right.
But for the grace of God, Quentin thinks, and it could be him sitting in that box. After all, there is not that much difference between himself and Nina Frost. Maybe he wouldn’t have killed for his son, but he certainly greased wheels to make Gideon’s conviction for drug possession go down much easier than it might have. Quentin can even remember that visceral pang that came when he found out about Gideon—not because he’d broken the law, like Tanya thought, but because his boy must have been scared shitless by the system. Yes, under different circumstances, Quentin might have liked Nina; might even have had something to talk to her about over a beer. Still, you make a bed, you’ve got to lie in it … which has landed Nina on the other side of the witness box, and Quentin six feet away and determined to take her down.
He raises one eyebrow. “You’re telling us that in spite of everything you know about the court system and child abuse cases, on the morning of October thirtieth you woke up with no intention of killing Father Szyszynski?”
“That’s right.”
“And that as you drove to the courthouse for this man’s arraignment, which—as you said—would start the clock ticking … at that point, you had no plans to kill Father Szyszynski?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Ah.” Quentin paces past the front of the witness stand. “I guess it came to you in a flash of inspiration when you were driving to the gun store.”
“Actually, no.”
“Was it when you asked Moe to load the semiautomatic weapon for you?”
“No.”
“So I suppose when you skirted the metal detector, back at the courthouse, killing Father Szyszynski was still not part of your plan?”
“It wasn’t.”
“When you walked into the courtroom, Mrs. Frost, and took up a position that would give you the best vantage point to kill Glen Szyszynski without harming anyone else in the room … even that, at that moment, you had no plans to kill the man?”
Her nostrils flare. “No, Mr. Brown, I didn’t.”
“What about at the moment you pulled the gun out of your pocketbook and shoved it up to Glen Szyszynski’s temple? Did you still have no plans to kill him then?”
Nina’s lips draw tight as a purse. “You need to give an answer,” Judge Neal says.
“I told the court earlier I wasn’t thinking at all at that moment.” Quentin’s drawn first blood, he knows it. “Mrs. Frost, isn’t it true that you’ve handled over two hundred child molestation cases in your seven years with the district attorney’s office?”
“Yes.”
“Of those two hundred cases, twenty went to trial?”
“Yes.”
“And of those, twelve were convictions.”
“That’s true.”
“In those twelve cases,” Quentin asks, “were the children able to testify?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, in several of those cases, there was no corroborating physical evidence, as there was in the case of your son, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“As a prosecutor, as someone with access to child psychiatrists and social workers and an intimate knowledge of the legal process, don’t you think you would have been able to prepare Nathaniel to come to court better than just about any other mother?”
She narrows her eyes. “You can have every resource in the world at your fingertips, and still never be able to prepare a child for that. The reality, as you know, is that the rules in court are not written to protect children, but to protect defendants.”
“How fortunate for you, Mrs. Frost,” Quentin says dryly. “Would you say you were a dedicated prosecutor?”
She hesitates. “I would say … I was too dedicated a prosecutor.”
“Would you say you worked hard with the children you put on the stand to testify?”
“Yes.”
“In light of those twelve convictions, wouldn’t you consider the work you did with those children to be successful?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she bluntly replies.
“But didn’t all those perpetrators go to jail?”
“Not long enough.”
“Still, Mrs. Frost,” Quentin presses. “You made the justice system work for those twelve children.”
“You don’t understand,” she says, her eyes blazing. “This was my child. As a prosecutor, my responsibility was completely different. I was supposed to take justice as far as I could for each of them, and I did. Anything else that happened outside the bounds of that courtroom was up to the parents, not me. If a mother decided to go into hiding to keep an abusive father away from her child—that was her decision to make. If a mother walked away from a verdict and shot an abuser, it had nothing to do with me. But then one day I wasn’t just the prosecutor anymore. I was the parent. And it was up to me to take every step to make sure my son was safe, no matter what.”
It is the moment Quentin’s waited for. Finely tuned to her anger, he steps closer to her. “Are you saying that your child is entitled to more justice than another child?”
“Those kids were my job. Nathaniel is my life.”
Immediately, Fisher Carrington bobs out of his seat. “Your Honor, may we take a short break—”
“No,” Quentin and the judge say simultaneously. “That child was your life?” Quentin repeats.
“Yes.”
“Were you willing to exchange your freedom, then, to save Nathaniel?”
“Absolutely.”
“Were you thinking about that when you held the gun up to Father Szyszynski’s head?”
“Of course I was,” she answers fiercely.
“Were you thinking that the only way to protect your son was to empty those bullets into Father Szyszynski’s head—”
“Yes!”
“—and to make sure he never left that courtroom alive?”
“Yes.”
Quentin falls back. “But you told us you weren’t thinking at all at that moment, Mrs. Frost,” he says, and stares at her until she has to turn away.
When Fisher stands up to redirect, I am still shaking. How could I, who knew better, let that get away from me? I frantically scan the faces of the jury, but I can’t tell a thing; you can never tell a thing. One woman looks near tears. Another is doing a crossword puzzle in the corner.
“Nina,” Fisher says, “when you were in the courtroom that morning, were you thinking that you would be willing to exchange your freedom to save Nathaniel?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“When you were in the courtroom that morning, were you thinking that the only way to stop that clock from ticking was to stop Father Szyszynski?”
“Yes.”
He meets my gaze. “When you were in the courtroom that morning, were you planning to kill him?”
“Of course not,” I reply.
“Your Honor,” Fisher announces, “the defense rests.”
Quentin lies on the godawful bed in the efficiency suite, wondering why the heat hasn’t kicked in, when he’s cranked it up to eighty degrees. He yanks the covers over himself, then flips through the channels on the television again. An entertainment program, Wheel of Fortune, and an infomercial for balding men. With a small grin, Quentin touches his shaved head.
He gets up and pads to the refrigerator, but the only thing inside it is a six-pack of Pepsi and a rotting mango he cannot recall buying. If he’s going to eat dinner, he’s going to have to get dinner. With a sigh, he sinks down on the bed to put on his boots and accidentally sits on the remote.
The channel switches again, this time to CNN. A woman with a smooth space helmet of red hair is speaking in front of a small graphic of Nina Frost’s face. “Testimony in the DA Murder Trial finished this afternoon,” the anchor says. “Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
Quentin turns off the TV. He ties his boots and then his gaze falls on the telephone beside the bed.
After three rings, he starts debating with himself about whether or not to leave a message. Then suddenly music explodes into his ear, a deafening backfire of rap. “Yeah?” a voice says, and then the sound is turned down.
“Gideon,” Quentin says. “It’s me.”
There is a pause. “Me who?” the boy replies, and it makes Quentin smile; he knows damn well who this is. “If you’re looking for my mom, she’s not here. Maybe I’ll tell her to call you back and then again maybe I’ll just forget to give her the message.”
“Gideon, wait!” Quentin can almost hear the phone, halfway to its cradle, being brought back to his son’s ear.
“What.”
“I didn’t call to talk to Tanya. I called to talk to you.”
For a long moment, neither of them speaks. Then Gideon says, “If you called to talk, you’re doing a lousy job of it.”
“You’re right.” Quentin rubs his temples. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About the whole rehabilitation sentence, all of it. At the time I really believed that I was doing what was best for you.” He takes a deep breath. “I had no right to start telling you how to live your life when I voluntarily walked out of it years before.” When his son stays silent, Quentin begins to get nervous. Did he get disconnected, without knowing it? “Gideon?”
“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” he says finally.
“No. I called to see if you wanted to meet me for some pizza.” Quentin tosses the remote control on the bed, watches it bounce. The moment he waits for Gideon’s response stretches to an eternity.
“Where?” Gideon asks.
Funny thing about a jury: no matter how scattered they seem during testimony; no matter who falls asleep in the back row and who paints their nails right during your cross-examinations, the minute it’s time to get down to business, they suddenly rise to the challenge. The jurors stare at Quentin now, their attention focused on his closing argument. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, “this is a very difficult case for me. Even though I do not know the defendant personally, I would have called her my colleague. But Nina Frost is not on the side of the law anymore. You all saw with your own eyes what she did on the morning of October thirtieth, 2001. She walked into a courtroom, put a gun up to an innocent man’s head, and she shot him four times.
“The ironic thing is that Nina Frost claims she committed this crime in order to protect her son. Yet as she found out later … as we all would have found out later, had the court system been allowed to work the way it is supposed to work in a civilized society … that in killing Father Szyszynski, she did not protect her son at all.” Quentin looks soberly at the jury. “There are reasons we have courts—because it’s very easy to accuse a man. Courts hold up the facts, so that a rational judgment can be made. But Mrs. Frost acted without facts. Mrs. Frost not only accused this man, she tried him, convicted him, and executed him all by herself on that morning.”
He walks toward the jury box, trailing his hand along the railing. “Mr. Carrington will tell you that the reason the defendant committed this crime is because she knew the justice system, and she truly believed it would not protect her son. Yes, Nina Frost knew the justice system. But she used it to stack the odds. She knew what her rights would be as a defendant. She knew how to act to make a jury believe she was temporarily insane. She knew exactly what she was doing the moment she stood up and shot Father Szyszynski in cold blood.”
Quentin addresses each juror in turn. “To find Mrs. Frost guilty, you must first believe that the state of Maine has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Father Szyszynski was unlawfully killed.” He spreads his hands. “Well, you all saw it happen on videotape. Second, you must believe that the defendant was the one who killed Father Szyszynski. Again, there’s no doubt in this case that this is true. And finally, you must believe that Mrs. Frost killed Father Szyszynski with premeditation. It’s a big word, a legal word, but you all know what it is.”
He hesitates. “This morning, as you were driving to court, at least one of you came upon a four-way intersection with a traffic light that was turning yellow. You needed to make a decision about whether or not to take your foot off the gas and stop … or whether you should speed through it. I don’t know what choice you made; I don’t need to. All I need to know—all you need to know—is that the split second when you made the decision to stop or to go was premeditation. That’s all it takes. And when Mrs. Frost told you yesterday that at the moment she held the gun to Father Szyszynski’s head, she was thinking that she needed to keep him from leaving the courtroom alive in order to protect her son—that, too, was premeditation.”
Quentin walks back toward the defense table and points at Nina. “This is not a case about emotions; this is a case about facts. And the facts in this case are that an innocent man is dead, that this woman killed him, and that she believed her son deserved special treatment that only she could give.” He turns toward the jury one last time. “Don’t give her any special treatment for breaking the law.”
“I have two daughters,” Fisher says, standing up beside me. “One’s a high school junior; the other goes to Dartmouth.” He smiles at the jury. “I’m crazy about them. I’m sure many of you feel the same about your kids. And that’s the way Nina Frost feels about her son, Nathaniel.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “However, one completely ordinary morning, Nina found herself facing a horrible truth no parent ever wants to face: Someone had anally raped her little boy. And Nina had to face a second horrible truth—she knew what a molestation trial would do to her son’s fragile emotional balance.”
He walks toward the jury. “How did she know? Because she’d made other parents’ children go through it. Because she had witnessed, time after time, children coming to court and dissolving into tears on the witness stand. Because she had seen abusers walk free even as these children were trying to fathom why they had to relive this nightmare all over again in front of a room full of strangers.” Fisher shakes his head. “This was a tragedy. Adding to it is the fact that Father Szyszynski was not the man who had hurt this little boy, after all. But on October thirtieth, the police believed that he was the abuser. The prosecutor’s office believed it. Nina Frost believed it. And on that morning, she also believed that she had run out of options. What happened in court that morning was not a premeditated, malicious act but a desperate one. The woman you saw shooting that man might have looked like Nina Frost, might have moved like Nina Frost—but ladies and gentlemen, that woman on the videotape was someone different. Someone not mentally capable of stopping herself at that moment.”
As Fisher takes another breath to launch into the definition of not guilty by reason of insanity, I get to my feet. “Excuse me, but I’d like to finish.”
He turns around, the wind gone from his sails. “You what?”
I wait until he is close enough for me to speak privately. “Fisher, I think I can handle a closing argument.”
“You are not representing yourself!”
“Well, I’m not misrepresenting myself either.” I glance at the judge, and at Quentin Brown, who is absolutely gaping. “May I approach, Your Honor?”
“Oh, by all means, go right ahead,” Judge Neal says.
We all go up to the bench, Fisher and Quentin sandwiching me. “Your Honor, I don’t believe this is the wisest course of action for my client,” Fisher says.
“Seems to me that’s an issue she needs to work on,” Quentin murmurs.
The judge rubs his brow. “I think Mrs. Frost knows the risks here better than other defendants. You may proceed.”
Fisher and I do-si-do for an awkward moment. “It’s your funeral,” he mutters, and then he steps around me and sits down. I walk up to the jury, finding my footing again, like a long-ago sailor stepping back on the deck of a clipper. “Hello,” I begin softly. “I think you all know who I am by now. You’ve certainly heard a lot of explanations for what brought me here. But what you haven’t heard, straight out, is the truth.”
I gesture toward Quentin. “I know this, because like Mr. Brown, I was a prosecutor. And truth isn’t something that makes its way into a trial very often. You’ve got the state, tossing facts at you. And the defense, lobbing feelings. Nobody likes the truth because it’s subject to personal interpretation, and both Mr. Brown and Mr. Carrington are afraid you might read it the wrong way. But today, I want to tell it to you.
“The truth is, I made a horrible mistake. The truth is, on that morning, I was not the vigilante Mr. Brown wants you to believe I was, and I wasn’t a woman having a nervous breakdown, like Mr. Carrington wants you to believe. The truth is I was Nathaniel’s mother, and that took precedence over everything else.”
I walk up to one juror, a young kid wearing a backward baseball cap. “What if your best friend was being held at gunpoint, and you had a revolver in your own hand? What would you do?” Turning to an older gentleman, I ask, “What if you came home and found your wife being raped?” I step back. “Where is the line? We’re taught to stand up for ourselves; we’re taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there’s a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this. And you know that the law won’t even do a very good job—it will traumatize your child, it will set free a convict in only a few years. In the eyes of this law that’s dealing with your problem, what’s morally right is considered wrong … and what’s morally wrong, you can get away with.”
I level my gaze at the jury. “Maybe I knew that the judicial system would not work for my son. Maybe I even knew, on some level, that I could convince a jury I looked crazy even though I wasn’t. I wish I could tell you for sure—but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that we don’t know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.”
I turn toward the gallery and look, in turn, at Caleb and Patrick. “For each of you sitting there, condemning me for my actions: How can you know that you wouldn’t have done the same thing, if put to the test? Every day, we do little things to keep the people we love from being hurt—tell a white lie, buckle a seat belt, take away car keys from a buddy who’s had one drink too many. But I’ve also heard of mothers who find the strength to lift cars off trapped toddlers; I’ve read of men who jump in front of bullets to save women they can’t live without. Does that make them insane … or is that the moment when they are painfully, 100 percent lucid?” I raise my brows. “It’s not for me to say. But in that courtroom, the morning I shot Father Szyszynski, I knew exactly what I was doing. And at the same time, I was crazy.” I spread my hands, a supplicant. “Love will do that to you.”
Quentin stands up to rebut. “Unfortunately for Mrs. Frost, there are not two systems of justice in this country—one for people who think they know everything, and one for everyone else.” He glances at the jury. “You heard her—she’s not sorry that she killed a man … she’s sorry she killed the wrong man.
“Enough mistakes have been made lately,” the prosecutor says wearily. “Please don’t make another one.”
When the doorbell rings, I think it might be Fisher. He hasn’t spoken to me since we left court, and the three hours the jury deliberated after closing arguments does tend to support his belief that I shouldn’t have gotten up to speak my mind. But when I open it, ready to defend myself— again —Nathaniel pitches into me. “Mom!” he yells, squeezing me so tightly I stumble back. “Mom, we checkered out!”
“Did you?” I say, and then repeat it over his head to Caleb. “Did you?”
He sets down his small duffel bag, and Nathaniel’s. “I thought it might be a good time to come home,” he says quietly. “If that’s okay?”
By now Nathaniel has his arms around the barrel of our golden retriever’s stomach; while Mason, wriggling, licks every spare inch of skin he can find. His thick tail thumps on the tile, a joyous tattoo. I know how that dog feels. Only now—in the presence of company—do I realize how lonely I have been.
So I lean against Caleb, my head tucked beneath his chin, where I cannot fail to listen to his heart. “Perfect,” I reply.
The dog was a pillow breathing underneath me. “What happened to Mason’s mom?”
My mother looked up from the couch, where she was reading papers with big words printed so tiny it made my head hurt just thinking about them. “She’s … somewhere.”
“How come she doesn’t live with us?”
“Mason’s mother belonged to a breeder in Massachusetts. She had twelve puppies, and Mason was the one we took home.”
“Do you think he misses her?”
“I guess he used to, at first,” she answered. “But it’s been a long time, and he’s happy with us. I bet he doesn’t remember her anymore.”
I slid my finger past Mason’s licorice gums, over his teeth. He blinked at me.
I bet she was wrong.