Off the Deep End (80)
He sits at the top of the legal pyramid with a cascade of cases underneath him. The parents of the murdered boys have filed a suit against the Greers for failure to report terroristic activity. Apparently, Isaac had been playing a violent video game with other people from all over the country, and they’d acted out similar attacks online. A handful of kids came forward after the shooting at Falcon Lake High School and confessed to knowing about it. Some of them had played it. The problem facing the Greers is that they knew all about the game too. Amber’s husband, Mark, actually played it with Isaac. Their trial doesn’t even start until September.
Then there’s all the parents of the boys who carried out similar attacks who have banded together to sue the video game creators. They’re all suing Dracho, claiming it created the aggression in their sons and that the game wasn’t being monitored closely enough. They also say the kids thought everything they were doing was all part of the game; that they didn’t actually know it was real. It’s all a big legal nightmare.
“Have you talked to Isaac?” Dr. Stephens asks.
I give him a sly smile. He knows better than that. I’m not supposed to have any contact with Isaac. It’s part of the conditions of my release and parole. Signed and stamped by the judge. But I wasn’t supposed to have any contact with him before, and we all know how that one turned out. “You know I can’t do that.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
I grin. He’s right. “This time is different. We’re respecting the rules.”
He nods, but I can tell he doesn’t believe me, and since I don’t want there to be any secrets between us, I lean forward and motion for him to come closer so none of the guards overhear. “We sent each other letters back and forth while he was in jail.” I keep my voice low. “Of course we weren’t dumb enough to send them ourselves. I had someone here send them for me, and they were all written in code, so if someone intercepted them, they’d never be able to figure out what we were talking about anyway.”
Adjusting to jail hadn’t been nearly as hard as I’d imagined it’d be. Turns out, people around here will do just as much for a cigarette as Hank would at Samaritan House.
I didn’t fight at my trial at all. I pleaded guilty on all my sexual abuse charges. As soon as I knew for sure I was pregnant, I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Get in and get out, as they say. I’m lucky. Minnesota has one of the few prisons that has a nursery ward. So even though I’ll give birth to my baby in jail, I’ll get to keep her, and we’ll get to live together while I serve out the last few months of my sentence. By then, I should only have about three months left, and all this will be behind me. I can finally move on. To bigger things. Better things.
I shift my gaze to Dr. Stephens. Those eyes. He doesn’t turn away from the heat of my stare. He must’ve missed me too.
“Have you ever had a case that you just couldn’t let go of because you had so many unanswered questions?” he asks after a few beats pass and neither of us has spoken.
“Absolutely.” There wasn’t a therapist who hadn’t. We all had our cases that haunted us and kept us up at night. Ones that invaded our dreams even after we’d finally fallen asleep. You couldn’t be a good therapist if you’d never had one of those moments. At least not in my opinion.
“I’m just hoping now that everything is said and done, you can tell me the truth about your relationship with Isaac.” Hadn’t he read the prosecutor’s report? It was all there in black and white.
“What do you want to know?” I lay my hands flat on the table and try to look like an open book. I’m willing to let him read my insides.
“You swore to me that your relationship with him wasn’t sexual.”
“It wasn’t.”
He cocks his head to the side and points at my stomach. “I’m confused.”
“There are other ways to get pregnant.” Even though I’m not really showing yet, it’s no secret that I’m pregnant or who the baby’s father is. The Greers insisted on a paternity test. Dr. Stephens looks even more confused now, and it’s hard not to giggle. “I told you our relationship wasn’t sexual, and it wasn’t. I promised you in the beginning that I wouldn’t lie to you, and I haven’t. I may have left out information and not been able to tell you everything, but I never lied to you.”
“I’m not following you.”
I reach across the table and pat his arm gently. I want to leave it there, but if I do, the guard will scream at me, so I quickly pull it back. “There are lots of other ways to get pregnant besides the old-fashioned way. There are cups . . . turkey basters . . .” That’s as far as I’ll go. He’s a grown man. He can figure it out. I watch my words sink in as some version of the actual story registers and then give him another moment to recover before going on. “First, he kept me alive, and then I did the same for him. It’s really that simple. We kept each other alive.”
We’d stumbled upon our mission and our purpose the same way we’d stumbled on each other—by accident. “I’d never hurt Isaac. I told you that from the beginning. Just like I told Amber. Having sex with Isaac would’ve just been so confusing for him. It would’ve blurred the lines of our relationship, and I couldn’t have that. That wouldn’t have been good for us.” I pause to look up at him. He’s listening intently. “I don’t need to tell you how important firm boundaries are in a relationship, especially one in which there’s such a power differential.” It was the entire reason they’d been able to charge me with felony sexual misconduct with a minor. The judge said I was abusing my position of trust and authority. I’d expected him to say just as much.