Miracle Creek(94)

She always went in with Henry after that, telling jokes and singing silly songs to distract him, but he never stopped hating it. Every day, getting in the sauna, he said, “Henry is brave. Henry is not a crybaby,” and blinked rapidly, the way he did when trying not to cry. And during the sessions, when he wiped at his tears, she swallowed and said, “Wow, you’re sweating so much, it’s even getting in your eyes!”

Thinking of that now, she wondered: Had Henry believed her? He sometimes said back to her, “Henry sweat so much!” and smiled. Was his smile genuine, from relief she wasn’t yelling at him for crying, or fake, to pretend that his tears were sweat? Was she merely a mean mom who frightened her child, or a psychotic mom who turned him into a liar? Or both?

The door opened. As Shannon walked in with Anna, an associate, she saw the familiar hallway outside the courtroom. Of course. They were in one of the attorney conference rooms.

Shannon said, “Anna found a fan, and I got some water. You look pale still. Here, drink.” She put a cup to Elizabeth’s lips and tilted it, the way you would for an invalid.

Elizabeth pushed it away. “No, I’m just hot. It’s hard to catch my breath in here.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Shannon said. “It’s a lot smaller than our usual room, but this is the only one without any windows.”

Elizabeth was about to ask why no windows, but she remembered. The clicks and flashes of cameras, Shannon trying to shield her, reporters pelting nonstop questions at her: What did you mean there’s no cat? Did your neighbors have cats? Have you ever had cats? Do you like cats? Was Henry allergic to cats? Do you believe in declawing cats?

Cat. Scratch. Henry’s arm. His voice. His words—

Elizabeth felt faint, her senses draining out and the world fading to black. She needed air. She moved her face down directly in front of the small fan clipped to the table. The lawyers didn’t seem to notice; they were checking voice mail and e-mails. She focused on the air, the blades whirring in a blur, and after a minute, blood returned to her head, a tingling around her scalp. “Is that a picture of Elizabeth’s nails?” Anna said, and Shannon said, “Shit, I bet the jury’s—” Elizabeth put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, focused on the buzz of the fan that, if she concentrated hard enough, filtered out their voices and left only Henry’s. Take vacations around the world. I should never have been born. The cat hates me.

“The cat hates me,” she said, under her breath. Was he elaborating on the imaginary cat, or was he talking about her, who scratched him and became the “cat” in his story? Did he really think she hated him? And the reference to vacations—she’d said that to Teresa, once. She’d moved far from Henry, who was watching DVDs, and whispered to make sure he wouldn’t hear. But he’d heard. Her whispered confession that she sometimes wished him dead—those words had bounced and echoed against the steel walls and somehow reached his ears.

She once read that sounds left permanent imprints; the tonal vibrations penetrated nearby objects and continued for infinity at the quantum level, like when you throw pebbles in the ocean and the ripples continue without end. Did her words, their ugliness, penetrate the walls’ atoms—the same way Henry’s pain at hearing them permeated his brain—and that last dive, when Henry was sitting in that same spot within those walls, the ugliness and the pain collided into a blast, blowing apart his neurons and torching him from the inside?

The door opened, and another associate, Andrew, walked in. “Ruth Weiss said yes!”

“Really? That’s great,” said Shannon.

Elizabeth looked up. “The protester?”

Shannon nodded. “I asked her to testify about Pak threatening her. It supports our—”

“But she did it. She set the fire and killed Henry. You know that,” Elizabeth said.

“No, I don’t know that,” Shannon said. “I know you think that, but we’ve been over this. They went straight from the police station to D.C. Cell tower pings place them in D.C. proper at 9:00, so there’s no way—”

“They could’ve planned it,” Elizabeth said. “One person could’ve stayed behind to set the fire, but they took all the phones to establish alibis. Or they could’ve driven really fast, made the drive in fifty minutes, or—”

“There’s no evidence of any of that, whereas there’s a ton of evidence against Pak. We’re in court. We need evidence, not speculation.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “That’s what the police did to me. It didn’t matter whether I really did it, just that I’m the easiest to prosecute. You’re doing the same thing. I’ve told you all along, you need to go after the protesters, but you’re giving up on them because it’s too hard to get proof.”

“Damn right,” Shannon said. “It’s not my job to go after the real perpetrators. My job is to defend you. And I don’t care how much you hate them. If they can help the jury to see Pak as a viable alternative and return a not-guilty verdict, they’re your best friends right now. And you need some, because after your outburst today, you’ve lost any support you had. The rumor mill is that Teresa went back to Abe’s side.”

“It’s true,” Andrew said. “I saw it, passing by a little while ago. She was alone in the courtroom, and she got up and switched seats, to the prosecution’s side.”