Red Clocks(68)

He picks up on the first ring. “Susan?”

Blood beats hard in her neck. “Listen, Edward”—talking faster than she ever talks—“you need to interview a new witness, his name’s Bryan Zakile, he told me firsthand that his cousin’s husband hits her, and his cousin is Dolores Fivey. I think he could—”

“Hold on,” says Edward.

She is light-headed. Can’t find her breath.

“Did he witness the hitting himself?”

“Okay, secondhand, but—”

“Also known as hearsay,” he says.

“Which is admissible if it constitutes materially exculpatory evidence, and if corroborating circumstances clearly support the hearsay’s trustworthiness.”

“Damn, Susan. After seven years?”

Splashing glow in her chest. She rushes on: “It would introduce some compelling doubt, at least—”

“Hold it. Mmh.”

Silence, while he thinks.

Her whole body is throbbing. This matters.

Edward says, “It would corroborate Ms. Percival’s claim that Mrs. Fivey disclosed her husband’s physical abuse. Which would in turn suggest a motive for Mrs. Fivey to lie about the—mmh.”

“You should talk to Bryan tonight,” she says. “I’ll text you his number.”

“Wait a minute. You said, ‘He told me his cousin’s husband hits her.’ Most people have more than one cousin.”

“He didn’t specify, but it is Mrs. Fivey, Edward. It has to be.”

“When did he give you this information?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“And you’re only telling me now?”

The glow cools. “I didn’t—connect them.”

“Mmh. I don’t know that any of this will make a difference. But give me his number. Good night.”

She sends the text and sits, twitching and exhilarated, in her grandmother’s chair in the dark.





Upon Oreius’s return to Copenhagen, in the summer of 1876, the gangrenous ring finger and pinky on Eiv?r Mínervudottír’s left hand were amputated. Her notebook does not brood long on the loss: “Two taken, under anesthesia. I have eight others.”

With her right hand she wrote up the Oreius data. Even before she had finished a draft of the article, she knew her title: “On the Contours and Tendencies of Arctic Sea Ice.”





THE MENDER


Keeps asking for different blankets, but they say work with what you have, Stretch. She hasn’t been sleeping. Her throat hurts. She misses Temple, who would burn the bleachy blankets and boil a throat syrup of marshmallow root and say Show them you’re not afraid.

Except she is.

There is one man on the jury whose eyes are alive. He looks at the mender like she’s a person. He smiled when Clementine told the courtroom “Gin Percival saved my vagina.” The other eleven watch her like she’s batshit.

Kook. People like to throw around labels.

Kooky. Don’t let them define you.

Kookaburra. You are exactly yourself, that’s who.

Temple, wish you weren’t gone.

The lawyer is excited today. His face is moving faster. He’s brought licorice nibs and lettuce, a brown loaf from Cotter, butter in a ziplock. He explains about the new witness he’s calling—Lola’s cousin—who doesn’t want to testify, so must be considered hostile.

“He’ll just lie,” says the mender, ripping bread with her teeth.

“Not if I approach him the right way.” He takes the butter-smeared hunk she hands him and sets it on the metal bench, too polite to say no. “And if he says what I think he’s going to say, then we recall Dolores Fivey to the stand.”

“Also me? I could tell them what she told me. After he broke her finger he said she better start taking calcium supplements.”

“You—” The lawyer smiles. “Not you.”

“Why?”

“You are so much your own person, Gin. And some people on the jury may feel … unnerved by that? People tend to be more comfortable with speech and behavior that does what they already expect it to do. Yours doesn’t, and I respect that it doesn’t. But I have to think about the jury’s perceptions.”

She side-eyes him. Being fake? Talking down? With this lawyer, not easy to tell.

Clementine waves at her from the gallery. Cotter’s there too, and the pissed-off blond lady from the library who doesn’t lower her voice when talking to the librarian.

The mender can’t remember seeing Lola’s cousin ever before. He looks like your basic man in a suit, dark hair cruelly combed.

“Mr. Zakile,” says her lawyer, “it is true you were a soccer star in college?”

The cousin’s mouth opens in surprise. “I don’t know about ‘star,’ but yeah, I made a contribution.”

“More than a contribution, I would say! According to the University of Maryland student newspaper, The Diamondback, you earned All-Conference honors with your ‘exquisite ball control and panther-like aggressiveness.’”

“Objection,” says the prosecutor. “Where is Mr. Tilghman going with this?”

“Your Honor, I’m establishing context and background for this witness. Mr. Zakile, the Washington Post described you as ‘a revelation’ in a win over Georgetown, during which you scored three goals.”