Learning to Stay (15 page)

“Ma’am?”

“No,” I say, choosing to answer only the last question. “No, I honestly can’t think of anything.” And that’s not technically lying.

I still think there has to be a misunderstanding. In fact, there’s a battle raging between what I know to be reality, which is that Brad has been picked up for attempted murder, and what I want to believe, which is that this has to do with a wayward client. I am a rational
person who loves logic so much that it borders on obsession. Yet I can’t seem to come down on the side of reason no matter the mental gymnastics I do.

We get to the station, and the police sit me down at an empty desk and continue to question me.

“I want to see my husband,” I say in response to every question, stonewalling. I cross my arms for added effect.

“Ma’am, we need to finish talking to you first. We’ll let you see him in a bit. Plus, he’s meeting with his attorney.”

“
I’m
his attorney,” I say.

The two officers look at each other, unsure how to proceed. I’m guessing it’s not every day that a suspect’s wife wants to represent him. I’m pretty sure they haven’t ever had this particular wrench thrown in their plans.

“But he has an attorney,” one of them says.

“A public defender?” I ask. They nod. “Well, tell the public defender that his services aren’t needed.”

“Ma’am, I’m not sure we can do that.”

“Am I a party to the crime?” I ask.

They shake their heads, perfectly synchronized.

“And am I a suspect in any way?”

More synchronized shaking.

“Then, according to Wisconsin state statute, you not only can do that; you’re required to.” I have no idea if this is completely true in this particular situation, and I couldn’t quote the statute to them if my life depended on it, but something in my tone carries enough confidence to convince them I’m right.

“I’ll relay the message,” the younger one says, turning and walking away.

I smile at Officer Noble, who looks like someone just called checkmate on him in a few quick moves. I pull out my legal pad. “Maybe we
can start with a quick briefing on what happened?” I say in the most friendly, agreeable tone I can muster.

Apparently, what happened is this: Sometime around when Zach and I were swearing in Topher Fenty for his deposition, my husband wandered into the home of seventy-nine-year-old Margie Valhalla, helped himself to a lunch of cold stew, and brandished a gun at the woman when she came home. He yelled, “Qeff Mahallak!” at her again and again until she crouched on the floor, covering her head with her hands.

It doesn’t sound exactly like attempted murder to me. But it doesn’t sound like my husband, either. For starters, he’s never owned a gun and I have no idea where he got one—or why.

Do I even know this man?
I wonder; then I shake the thought loose from my head.
It’s a misunderstanding—you’ll see.

When they take me in to see Brad, he’s sitting slump-shouldered in only a T-shirt and jeans, in a bare room slightly larger than a closet. His hair is disheveled, sprouts of it poking up every which way, and his eyes are red-rimmed. Those eyes lock on mine, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a look so pleading.

I want to wrap my arms around him, to tell him I’m going to fix it. But empty promises aren’t a good Band-Aid for this situation; besides, I don’t want to cross any ethical, professional, or legal lines—actual or perceived. Or, at least, not any more than those I might already have tripped over.

So I sit, hands clasped, while a police officer different from either of the two who were sent to fetch me questions Brad, writing down anything of importance and details I need to look into later.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” the officer says. “Just tell me what you remember about today, from the time you woke up until now. What did you do? Who did you see? What shows did you watch?”

“I told you—I don’t remember,” Brad says wearily, not combatively.

Somehow I knew he was going to say that.

I’ve gotten used to this quirk of Brad’s. Something will trigger him and send him spiraling into an alternate reality of sand and scalding sun and gunfire as common as birds chirping are here. Afterward, he rarely remembers any of it. Brad has already lost whole minutes, even hours, of his life this way.

“Come on. Give me anything,” the officer says. “Why did you go into that house?”

Brad runs his hands over his face and through his hair. It’s still sticking up, but all in the same direction. “I don’t remember,” he says.

“You went into an old woman’s house, with a gun, and waited for her to get home. Why? What were you going to do?”

“I don’t
remember
.” Brad’s voice cracks. I’m not sure if the officer hears it, but I do.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” the officer says. His face is as red as Zach’s was when I told him I was leaving in the middle of Frenty’s deposition.

And then I remember: Zach. The deposition.
Shit
.

I pull out my phone. It’s nearly two o’clock and I have six missed calls. Anduzzi is scheduled for two o’clock.
Shit, shit, shit.

I send Zach an e-mail:
Almost done. There in 20. Stall!
Then I ask the officer questioning Brad if I may talk to him outside. He holds up his index finger and continues with the question he was asking Brad. “What were you doing in that house?”

“Outside?” I ask the officer again.

This time he relents. In the hallway, I tell him that Brad is an Iraq vet only recently returned from active duty.

“I don’t care if he’s the goddamn president of the United States,”
he says. “He tried to kill an old lady when she walked into her own home. Does that sound like acceptable behavior to you?”

“Come on,” I say. “We both know he didn’t try to kill her. Anyway, Brad has…issues that he’s struggling with right now. From being over there. I know my husband, and I know that he didn’t set out to hurt that woman. He needs help.”

“Then get him some.” His tone is snotty—a sneer.

“You don’t think I’m trying? Do you have any idea what kind of support these guys receive when they get back?”

The officer is staring me down. He shakes his head.

“I’ll give you an idea: If they’re still useful, if they can go back over to that godforsaken sandbox, the military fixes them up, good as new. Or, almost. Good enough, anyway.” My voice starts rising and I make no effort to lower it. “But if they can’t, if the soldier’s medically discharged? Then they don’t even get a new set of steak knives for their trouble. For having their lives turned upside down and then inside out. You know what a benefits specialist with the VA told me the other day? That they’d be happy to treat Brad if we can just establish that his ‘difficulties’ are related to his service. So I asked her what types of ‘proof’ would be acceptable—documents? Affidavits from guys he served with, or maybe one from his platoon commander? Oh, wait. Never mind. He was blown to bits in the same incident that left Brad like this.” I point toward the examination room behind us.

The officer is no longer looking at me. Instead, he stares mostly at his shoes, with the occasional glance past me, down the hall.

“My husband’s brain is so garbled that he can barely hold a single thought for any length of time, which makes holding down a job almost impossible. And because he can’t get a job, he can’t get insurance, which he needs because his TRICARE runs out in a handful of months and the waiting list to get him in to see someone about all this is nearly twice that long. My insurance won’t cover him until
our enrollment period starts, and even then they probably won’t because he has so many preexisting conditions, I’m sure they’d run out of room on the fucking form trying to list them all. He’s a good person, a kind person, who risked his life—
willingly
—for this country while you and your buddies were playing grab-ass and slugging down beers and high-fiving one another during Packers games on Sunday afternoons. So maybe you can go ahead and spare me the lectures on responsibility and good citizenship, okay?”

I fish my phone from my pocket and check the time. It is ten after two. “Shit,” I mutter.

I hand the officer a business card. “I need to go back to work,” I say. “I’ll be back later. In the meantime, I’d appreciate your letting me know about the bond requirements for my husband.”

I don’t give him a chance to respond. I turn and walk down the hall, my heels click-click-clicking on the worn linoleum. When I come to the room where Brad is still sitting, head in his hands, I duck inside and kneel down next to him.

“Babe,” I say, resting a hand on his knee, “I’m going to get this all straightened out. Just hold tight. And don’t answer any questions from anyone until I’m here with you. Okay?”

He nods his head. “Okay,” he says meekly.

“Repeat it to me,” I say.

“Quit treating me like a little kid, E.,” he says. There’s a flash of anger in his face, but then it’s gone and he’s back to looking broken. “Please,” he adds.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him. “I’m so sorry, love. I’m going to fix this, okay?”

I want to kiss him, to press my forehead against his, to do any of the millions of things I so badly want to do right then to comfort him, to show him that everything is going to be all right. Instead, I trace a finger down his face and caress his cheek. Then, I pull on my coat and
grab my notepad and bag, and I march out the door, making it all the way to the street in front of the police station before I realize that I don’t have a way back to the hotel—not in time to make Anduzzi’s deposition—and I sit down on the curb, press my forehead to my knees, and cry.

For three days I work on getting the charges against Brad dropped.

I think about him every minute of every hour of each of these few days, while he’s sitting in jail. Part of me rails against the injustice: training someone to do whatever it takes to defend himself and his country, systematically turning him into a machine that can kill someone as easily as letting out a sneeze, and then locking him up when, fresh from combat, he doesn’t immediately mesh with the nice, neat society we have going back home.

The other part of me is relieved. For now, there’s someone else watching Brad. There’s someone else responsible for him.

Zach walks into my office as I’m poring over books of Wisconsin criminal law statutes instead of files for
Rowland
. He shakes his head in disgust and closes my office door behind him. Then he sits down in one of the two client chairs opposite mine.

“Okay,” he says. “Talk.”

“What?” I ask. I know what he wants. And in truth, the very least I can do is explain. But I don’t want anyone here to know. I want to get everything with Brad sorted out and go back to being the rising star of an attorney that I was up until a few months ago. I don’t want
the partners to think less of me. I don’t want to answer questions such as “How are things going?” that always carry the double meaning, “Can we depend on you again yet?” Most of all, I don’t want to pull Zach into the mosh pit of my personal life. Is it because I like having this one place, this one person with whom I still feel like my old self? Is it because I want him to think that I’m smarter and more capable than I feel right now? Maybe both.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he demands.

The thing is, I’m fresh out of confidants. In the past I’ve always confided in Brad first, then Darcy. Between the two of them and Granna, my life was full enough to not require expanding my circle of friends. Now none of them is an option.

But Zach is. Don’t always think the worst of people. He might surprise you.

I bite my lip and look up at Zach. I don’t know how to begin telling him, where to start.

“Sabatto, I covered your ass the other day. I had to call Susan in to help on Anduzzi when they wouldn’t reschedule. I told her your dog got hit by a car and was hanging on by a thread, and that Soldier Boy wasn’t around, so you had to rush to the vet.”

“I don’t have a dog,” I say.

“That’s what Susan said. I told her you just got one. You might want to think about actually doing that now, just in case she does a spot check.”

See?
a voice inside says.

I venture a laugh. “Maybe I could just say that it didn’t work out?”

“That works, too,” Zach says. “Get some used toys and a bed at least.”

I give him a salute. “Roger that.”

“So,” Zach says, reaching for one of the books open in front of me and flipping to the front cover, “what is all this?”

I sigh. I’ve tried so hard for so long to keep these two worlds—my work and personal life—as far apart as possible. I don’t have framed personal photographs in my office, only my diplomas and some generic artwork. I don’t often wear a ring to work, and never to court, and I almost never reference my husband, since these things are only reminders to the partners that I have a personal life—and even worse, that I might someday soon choose to have children. Yet here those worlds are, colliding.

“Brad got in a bit of trouble,” I say.

“What kind of trouble?”

I take a deep breath. “Attempted murder,” I say, wincing. But when I look up, Zach hasn’t run from the room. He’s still sitting across from me, and although shock has registered on his face, it’s not judgment. “Well, at least, that’s what they’re charging him with,” I add.