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“Objection.”
“Sustained,” said Judge Shaw, allowing Harris to finally step down.
As Harris stumbled off the stand, red-faced and trembling with a combination of fear and sheer relief, Rachel could tell the jurors were divided over his testimony. Several jurors sat with their arms crossed. They wouldn’t look his way. It was obvious to Rachel that they simply didn’t believe Harris. A few others, mostly the older women in the jury, watched him with some sympathy as he left the stand. It was clear that his life was in shambles from the consequences of that night.
Rachel had spoken briefly to Harris’s dad, Bill, before court that morning. He’d said that they’d lost their house because he couldn’t cover the mortgage payments and pay the lawyers representing his son when he was fired from his job. His boss, a cousin of Dan Moore, had retrenched Bill after Harris was charged, claiming it was part of a restructuring. The family was now living with Bill’s parents an hour’s drive from Neapolis while Bill looked for a new job.
When court adjourned for lunch, Rachel watched through the hall window as Harris’s dad walked across the southern courthouse lawn to his car, his hand on his son’s left shoulder to comfort him. The lawn bore no sign it had been the scene of live news broadcasts across the country other than a few muddy indents in the grass in the shape of broadcast-van wheels.
After Harris and his dad were out of sight, Rachel stood for a moment watching people scatter across the plaza for the lunch recess. There was a line forming outside a food truck across the road. Others headed to cafes down side streets or sat on benches to eat packed lunches.
Rachel spent the lunch recess working on a bench in the hall outside the courtroom. She’d packed a sandwich but didn’t have a chance to eat it as she typed up the notes from that morning’s testimony. When she was done, she posted the notes on the websiteand closed her laptop as people started filing back into court for the afternoon session.
Rachel used the remaining time to slip into the ladies’ restroom. When she came out of the stall and approached the sink to wash her hands, she saw a small envelope propped against a hand soap dispenser. It had her name on it. The restroom door swung backward and forward as if someone had just left.
26
Hannah
I heard your message for me at the end of the podcast, Rachel. You want to meet me. I get it. I want to meet you, too. I’ve been a fan for a long time. But trust me, right now is not the best time. One day, you’ll understand. It really is in your own best interests. What’s that expression? “Plausible deniability”?
That doesn’t mean we haven’t met, incidentally. If you can call two strangers passing by each other in a crowded courthouse plaza a meeting. Among other places where we’ve virtually rubbed shoulders.
In fact, you looked right at me this morning when I was in court today. I came in just before the guard closed the doors for the morning session. The only seat available was in the last row. I was stuck staring at the balding head of the man in the row in front of me, listening to Harris Wilson recount his role in Kelly Moore’s rape. Harris tried to sound unwitting. I didn’t buy it. He knew what he was doing when he followed Kelly from the party that night.
Still, I thought Harris’s testimony was damaging. I bet ScottBlair never imagined his loyal wingman would turn on him once the prosecutors offered him a plea deal.
I didn’t stay for long. I found the testimony too upsetting. Nothing has changed. Everyone is still up to their same tricks. I was so disgusted that I came out and scribbled this note for you instead.
Yesterday I went back to see our house. Of course, it no longer exists. Stupid me to have imagined that it was still there just as I remembered it. I’m sure the locals were happy to see it gone. The last trace of the Stills family erased.
We moved to Neapolis when Jenny was eight. I was a toddler. Too young to remember our momentous arrival in a brown station wagon where we had to sleep for weeks until the house was habitable. Mom’s grandfather hadn’t cleaned the house in the fourteen years since his wife died. Her name was Hannah, too. Mom never talked about her grandfather, but she kept a photo of her grandmother on her dresser.
Jenny told me once that Mom ran away as a teenager and only returned once her grandfather died because she’d inherited his house, along with the surrounding land. Jenny said it was her first permanent home. It was all she ever said about their life before we moved to Neapolis.
I was told plenty of stories about how Mom and Jenny spent weeks cleaning that house as I toddled around the overgrown garden in my diapers. Once they’d thrown out the junk that Mom’s grandfather had hoarded, she and Jenny scraped the dirt off the floors with trowels and grease remover.
When the house was clean, they painted the walls and window frames in a fresh shade of white. They sanded down and wood-washed the timber kitchen cupboards and reworked the grime-filled tiling in the bathroom and kitchen using oddmentsof bright yellow and blue tiles that Mom bought at a hardware store closing-down sale.
Our furniture was secondhand. Mom would buy furniture at garage sales or flea markets. She used to say that all it took was a few coats of paint and a whole lot of imagination.
She hid our threadbare sofas under painters’ throw sheets that she’d dyed crimson in a metal washing basin. She decorated the windowsills with painted glass jam jars that she filled with wild yellow daisies we’d pick from the fields around the house.
When she got sick, I always made sure to put a vase of yellow daisies in her room so that there was something for her to look at on the days when she couldn’t get out of bed. She was in bed an awful lot that summer.
As for Jenny, she became skinnier than ever after she was taken by those boys. She was always thin, so that was saying something. Her face became pale and her glossy hair turned brittle and lifeless. Her nails were a disaster. She bit them down almost to the flesh.
Mom was so ill that she had no idea that Jenny was hurting. Maybe I should have told her. God help me, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I kept the house going as best I could. Mopping the floor and hanging out laundry while standing on my tiptoes to reach the clothesline. It was fortunate that nobody had an appetite. There was no need to cook. I lived off jelly-and-peanut-butter sandwiches and glasses of milk. I spent the days drawing pictures on the porch and riding my bicycle.
One afternoon, I heard tapping on the screen door while I was slumped on the sofa, watching television. Visitors rarely stopped by. Through the window, I saw a woman. She was snooping around while she waited for me to answer the door.
“Is your mom home?” The lady wore a patterned dress with lipstick too orange for her complexion, her blow-dried hair sagging from the humidity.
“She’s not seeing visitors,” I said.
“She’s expecting me,” the woman insisted. “We arranged this meeting weeks ago. Tell her that Mrs. Mason has come to see her.”
