Chapter 46

She had not slept.

She had tried. She had lain on the office couch at four in the morning after Freen left and closed her eyes and the city had gone about its early morning outside the windows and she had not slept at all.

At six she gave up and made coffee and sat at her desk and read through the closing argument one more time. Not because it needed reading – it was done, it was right, she knew every word of it. She read it because it was something to do with her hands while the rest of her was somewhere else entirely.

At seven Heng arrived.

He looked at her. At the office couch with the blanket she had borrowed from the storage cupboard. At the two coffee cups on her desk.

He said nothing.

He put his bag down and made her a fresh coffee and placed it on her desk and went to his own desk and started working.

She was very glad Heng existed.

—

Engfa’s two people arrived at eight.

They were not in uniform. They looked like – she wasn’t sure what they looked like. Not lawyers. Not clerks. Something else that she was now, after two months of watching Freen move through the world, slightly better at identifying.

They introduced themselves briefly. She shook their hands. They positioned themselves in the corridor outside the courtroom in a way that looked casual and wasn’t.

She understood now how much of the past two months had looked casual and wasn’t.

At nine Nam checked in.

A text to Becky’s phone. She hadn’t expected that – hadn’t known Nam had her number, though she supposed Nam had everything.

Operation started. Will update.

Becky read it. Put her phone face down on the table. Picked up the closing argument.

She read the same paragraph four times.

At nine fifty-eight: Six of them. She’s handling it.

Becky put her phone down.

She looked at the closing argument.

She looked at her phone.

She picked up the closing argument.

At ten eighteen: Done. All contained. She’s okay.

Becky sat very still for a moment.

She typed back: Is she hurt.

A pause. Longer than she wanted.

Minor. She’s okay. Coming to you.

Becky put the phone down.

She breathed.

Then she picked up the closing argument and read it from the beginning and this time it went in.

—

Freen arrived at eleven forty.

Becky heard her before she saw her – the particular sound of her in a corridor, the way she moved, which Becky had learned without trying to learn it over two months. She was at the table when the door opened.

She had promised herself she would be calm.

Freen walked in.

The cut above her eyebrow had been closed with something – tape, maybe, or steri-strips, she couldn’t tell from across the room. It had stopped bleeding but the skin around it was dark and there was dried blood at her temple that she hadn’t fully cleaned off. Her left hand had a cloth wrapped around it, not cleanly, the kind of wrapping that happened in a car rather than a first aid kit.

She was walking carefully.

Not obviously. If you didn’t know what to look for you wouldn’t notice. Becky noticed.

“Hi,” Freen said.

“Hi,” Becky said.

She stood up.

“Sit down,” she said. Not to Freen – to the chair beside the table. She was already moving to her bag, which had the first aid kit she had put in there this morning at six am without examining why.

“I’m fine,” Freen said.

“Sit down,” Becky said again.

Freen sat down.

—

Heng appeared in the doorway.

Becky looked at him. “First aid kit from the clerk’s room. The proper one.”

“Already getting it,” Heng said. He was gone.

Engfa’s two people glanced through the door and then looked away and found other things to be interested in. Becky was aware of them making a collective decision to see nothing.

She pulled her chair around to face Freen directly.

She looked at the eyebrow first. The strips were holding but not cleanly – whoever had applied them had done it quickly and on the move. She opened her own kit and found what she needed.

“This is going to need proper closing,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not closed properly.” Becky leaned forward. “Hold still.”

Freen held still.

Becky worked carefully. She cleaned around the cut first – the dried blood at the temple, the area around the strips – and Freen sat completely still through all of it. Not flinching. Not reacting. Just still, the way she was still in every situation, which Becky found simultaneously reassuring and infuriating.

“The hand,” Becky said when she was done with the eye.

Freen held out her left hand.

Becky unwrapped the cloth.

The palm was cut across the heel of the hand – not deep but wide, the kind of cut that came from something rough rather than something sharp. Two fingers had smaller cuts. All of them had been bleeding and had mostly stopped.

“How did this happen,” Becky said.

“Someone grabbed my wrist. Their jacket.”

Becky cleaned the palm. She felt Freen’s hand stay completely still in hers even when she pressed on the wider cut.

“That hurts,” Becky said.

“Yes,” Freen said.

“You’re not reacting.”

“I noticed.”

Becky looked up at her.

Freen looked back.

Becky looked back down at the hand.

She worked through the palm and the fingers and put clean strips across the wider cut and wrapped it properly – the way it should have been wrapped the first time, not in a car on the way to a courthouse.

Heng reappeared with the clerk’s room kit. He set it on the table and left without a word.

“Your side,” Becky said.

Freen was quiet for a moment. “It’s bruised. There’s nothing to do about bruised.”

“I know there’s nothing to do about it.” Becky sat back. “I just want to know how bad.”

“It’s manageable.”

“Freen.”

“It’s manageable,” Freen said again. “I’ll be sore tomorrow. I’m functional today.”

Becky looked at her.

Functional. She had heard Nam use the word in the text. She’s okay. Becky had not entirely believed the okay and she was not entirely believing functional now but she also understood, looking at Freen sitting in this chair, that this was the most she was going to get right now.

She sat back.

She looked at Freen.

The closed eyebrow. The bandaged hand. The way she was sitting very slightly carefully, the left side telling on her despite everything.

“You said you’d come back,” Becky said.

“I did,” Freen said.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Minor detail.”

Becky looked at her.

She looked at the bandaged hand and the closed eyebrow and the careful sitting and the complete composure of a woman who had just taken on six people by herself and had come back in time for a two o’clock closing argument with a first aid kit and minor detail.

Something broke open in her chest.

She laughed.

She hadn’t meant to. It came out before she decided – surprised, helpless, the kind of laugh that arrived without permission and took over. She pressed her hand over her mouth and it didn’t help.

Freen looked at her.

Then Freen laughed too.

Not the small professional sounds Becky had heard occasionally over two months. A real laugh – surprised by itself, caught off guard by Becky’s, the kind that happened when you had been holding something very tightly for a very long time and something broke the tension and your body just – let go.

They laughed.

In the corridor Heng heard it and said nothing. Engfa’s two people heard it and looked at each other briefly and then looked away.

The laughter settled.

They looked at each other.

Something had changed.

Not fixed – not resolved, not simple. But changed. The particular shift of something that had been wound very tight for a very long time releasing just enough that the room felt different from how it had felt thirty seconds ago.

“Okay,” Becky said. She wiped her eye. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Freen said.

Becky looked at the first aid kit on the table. She started packing it back up – the wrappers, the used strips, the cloth Freen had brought in. Her hands were steady. They had been steady the whole time, through the eyebrow and the hand and all of it.

They were still steady now.

“The closing arguments are at two,” she said.

“I know.”

“You should eat something.”

“So should you.”

Becky looked at her. “Heng,” she called.

Heng appeared immediately. “Already ordering,” he said.

Becky looked back at Freen.

“Thank you,” she said. Not for the food. Not for sitting still while she cleaned cuts. For the promise. For the coming back. For six people in an empty building at ten in the morning so that she could stand in a courtroom at two in the afternoon and do the thing she had spent eight months building toward.

For all of it.

Freen looked at her.

“You have a closing argument to deliver,” she said.

“I do,” Becky said.

“It’s good.”

“I know.”

“Then go deliver it,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her for one more moment.

Then she picked up the closing argument and stood up and straightened her jacket and was, once again, the lawyer who was going to walk into that courtroom and finish what she had started.

She was also, simultaneously, something else entirely.

Both things.

At the same time.

She went to deliver the closing argument.