“I’m working on something. You talk too much, and I can’t think with all that blabbing,” she snapped.
Lindsey frowned at her, and for a second Ama wondered if Lindsey was about to cry, wondered, too, at the guilt stirring under her ribs. Then Lindsey planted a hand on the door and shoved it completely open. Ama nearly stumbled in her effort to get out of the way. Light flooded the room and illuminated the ring of paper, the unopened dinner, the empty suitcase.
“What is all this?” Lindsey asked as she strode inside.
“It’s not your business.” She moved in front of Lindsey, but Lindsey walked around her.
“This is all from your father’s trial.” Lindsey glanced back at her. Then her gaze shifted to the empty suitcase. “Is that what you had me bring up here last night?” She walked the circle of information, two chronological arcs meeting at top and bottom, the left half for innocence, the right side for guilt. “What are you looking for?” Lindsey asked softly.
“The beginning.” The confession fell from Ama, heavy and barbed, and it took pieces of her with it as it left her body.
“Why?”
“What if he was guilty?” She can barely speak the words.
“What if he was?” Lindsey echoed.
“I’ve built my whole life around knowing he was innocent, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt they’d put an innocent man away. I have been determined to put the system on trial ever since. But what if they weren’t wrong? What if, all this time, I’ve been wrong, and the system worked?”
“Having faith in your father doesn’t make you wrong, no matter what he did or didn’t do.”
“Doesn’t it, though?” Ama turned away from the pressure of Lindsey’s attention and caught herself staring at a photograph she’d tucked into the netting of the suitcase. Her and her father, at a park for her eighth birthday.
“You were a little girl with a father who adored you. You weren’t on trial then, and you’re not on trial now.”
“It feels like I am,” Ama said. She leaned back against the wall and ran her fingers over the textured surface, anchoring herself to the present.
“Why does it all matter right now?” Lindsey asked, her voice suddenly firm. “Is it because of what happened to you? You think you got shot by a stranger because you defend guilty people?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Ama Chaplin I know doesn’t think the world works that way,” Lindsey said.
“I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore. I know how that sounds. God, I know how that sounds.” Ama tsked at herself. “I set out to put the system on trial, to force it to be better, to shine a light on all the trapdoors innocent people can fall through. And for all these years, I’ve felt like whatever hurt I’ve caused other people along the way was just the price of doing business, the cost of revealing a larger truth. What if, all this time, I’ve been dead fucking wrong?”
Lindsey watched her for a minute. “I’ve seen you lose cases. I’ve seen you put the fear of God in the minds of monsters. I’ve seen you pull out that newspaper article in your bottom desk drawer from the day your father was convicted and stare at it for your entire lunch break. But I have never seen you question yourself or why you do what you do.
“Because you are good, better than good, which means you force prosecutors to work harder, you force the system to honor our most basic foundational principal in a court of law: innocent until proven guilty That is the beginning, Ama. That’s the only thing that matters. I don’t know what you’re going through, but I know you well enough to see that whatever this is, it isn’t just about you and it isn’t just about your dad. I think it has something to do with whatever really happened in Tarson Woods. I know you won’t tell me everything, and that’s okay. You don’t have to. But if you want me to help you, you do have to tell me what you actually need.”
Ama looked at the circle of evidence as if seeing it for the first time. Innocent until proven guilty. She of all people understood how sometimes evidence lied, how every single finger and test and lead could point to someone innocent. She couldn’t change the outcome of her father’s trial from the floor of this motel, and even if she stumbled upon irrefutable proof her father had been innocent, he was dead. There was no changing that.
Had she launched herself into his trial because it seemed easier, less overwhelming, than finding Michael and Hazel? Their case—her case—was over her head and out of her league, no question. But then whose league did it belong in? The justice system had failed to convict Michael, and this town had been staring at his face for two years and had no idea. She couldn’t hand off the one chance to bring him down and bring Hazel back alive to the department that kept fucking it up.
With a start, the simplest of truths presented itself to Ama: she was putting herself, her life, her work, on trial. But Lindsey was right—Ama knew exactly who she was, and that value wasn’t something she was willing to put on trial for anyone. Guilty people didn’t go free because the defense was too good; they walked because the prosecution hadn’t been good enough.
“Lindsey…” Ama trailed off and clamped her teeth briefly down on her lip, organizing her thoughts, focusing them ahead instead of in the past. The fundraiser was still the best option she could think of to draw Michael out of hiding and into the public eye; her instincts hadn’t been wrong there. But if Martin was right about the timing of the news article, he was also right about the event being too late for Hazel. Even if the AJC agreed to delay the story, she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t tease it somewhere. The date of the event would have to be moved to this Saturday. At least she hadn’t sent off the press releases yet. She could only hope that with more money, the promise of press, Lindsey’s ability to talk people into anything, and the opportunity to look like good Samaritans, everyone would be willing to accelerate the logistics.
“I’m not going to tell you everything,” Ama began again.
“That’s okay,” Lindsey said. “I’m used to it. Just tell me enough.”
MICHAEL Chapter 62 | 8:35 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
I SPRINT DOWN ONE LAST hill, darting between trees, and burst into the field surrounding the factory. Overhead, the clouds part and I am spotlighted by the moon, which washes the wet, dead grass in a silver glow. Mist rises from the damp earth, swallowing me from all sides, hiding me from anyone peering down from higher ground.
I have lost Ama for now, but it would appear I have not lost all favor with Lady Fate. Protect yourself, protect our work, she seems to say.
When Eddie appeared in the dark, I thought I was seeing things the way I saw Timmy’s ghost on the bank of Cold River. Then Eddie spoke, fired the gun, the blast tearing apart the dark, echoing in the chambers of my ears. How could I not have foreseen that this piece would be the most challenging, that Lady Fate would make sure I earned it?
I laugh in spite of myself as I pry open the cap to the underground bunker. The harder this becomes, the more opposition we face, the closer we must be to the most perfect song.
I steal down the ladder and crack open the main door. Hazel sleeps huddled in the corner between the concrete wall and the metal shelving unit. Her forehead rests on her knees. Her elbows frame the sides of her face, and her shackled wrists swing back in forth in tiny movements, pitched and dangling ahead of her like a diver leaning over the side of a pool.