Chapter 37

She had sat with it all night.

Not sleeping – sitting. She had changed out of her work clothes and made tea she didn’t drink and sat at her kitchen table with the city outside her window doing its Tuesday night thing and she had gone through it. All of it. Every piece she had collected over two months, every thing she had filed and not pulled out, every time she had noticed something that didn’t fit and had chosen to keep going anyway.

The coffee she knew without being asked.

The exits she always knew first.

Jeff in the gallery.

Eleven seconds.

She put it all in order the way she put evidence in order – chronologically, logically, building toward the shape of it. By two in the morning the shape was very clear.

By three she had decided what she was going to do with it.

—

She was at the office at seven forty.

Normal time. She went into her office and closed the door and opened the closing argument and looked at it for twenty minutes without reading it. Then she closed it and opened the witness prep notes and looked at those too.

At eight fifteen she heard Freen arrive.

The particular sound of her – the glass partition door, the chair, the specific quality of Freen settling into her desk that Becky had learned without meaning to learn it. She heard her open a file. Heard her pour water from the jug on the side table.

Completely normal. Completely professional.

Becky looked at her closed door.

She waited until her voice would be level. This took until eight forty-five. She was a lawyer. She knew how to wait for level.

She opened the door.

—

“Come in,” she said.

Freen looked up from her desk. She read Becky’s face in the way she read everything – quickly, completely, reaching a conclusion and filing it. She closed her file and came in.

Becky closed the door behind her.

She went to her desk and stood behind it. Not sitting. Standing. Freen stood on the other side of it. Neither of them sat.

Becky looked at her.

“What are you,” she said.

Her voice was completely level. She had waited until it was completely level and it was.

Freen said nothing.

“Were you ever a lawyer.”

Nothing.

“The firms in Chiang Mai. Prasert and Associates. Lanna Legal.”

“They exist,” Freen said.

“But you didn’t work there.”

Nothing.

Becky looked at her. Freen looked back. She wasn’t performing composure – she was just composed, the way she was composed in every situation Becky had ever seen her in, which was itself an answer.

“Are you even who you said you are.”

Freen was quiet for a moment. “My name is real,” she said. “Everything else-“

She stopped.

The office was quiet.

Becky looked at her. At the woman who had brought her coffee for two months and known her order without being asked and stayed late every night and read the closing argument sections back to her and stood between her and a parking garage and been – present, constantly, completely, for every moment of the past two months.

She closed her eyes.

She kept them closed for three seconds.

When she opened them Freen was still there. Still looking at her. Still not performing anything.

“Get out of my office,” Becky said.

Her voice was level the whole way through.

—

Freen went.

She closed the door behind her. Quietly – the way she did everything. Becky heard her sit at her desk outside. Heard her open a file.

She stood behind her desk for a moment.

Then she sat down.

She opened the closing argument. She read the first paragraph. The words went in and came back out and she read it again and the same thing happened.

She put it down.

She looked at the closed door.

On the other side of it Freen was at her desk. She could hear it – the quiet sounds of someone working. A page turning. A pen on paper. The particular focused quiet that she had been hearing from that desk for two months.

She picked up the closing argument.

She read the first paragraph a third time.

—

The morning went.

Heng arrived at nine and knocked on her door and she told him she was in a meeting and he went away. At ten Noey knocked and she said the same thing. Nobody knocked after that because Heng had clearly told people and Heng was very good at communicating things without appearing to communicate them.

She worked.

Or she tried to work. The closing argument was there and she went through the motions of working on it – reading sections, making notes, going back and changing things. The work was not bad. Some of it was actually good. She kept going.

At twelve thirty she stood up and went to the window.

Bangkok at midday. The light direct and hot. The street below full of people heading to lunch, the ordinary city doing its ordinary Friday.

She looked at the reflection in the glass.

Her office behind her. The closed door. Beyond it – the outer office, Freen’s desk, the back of a dark head bent over a file.

She had been there all morning.

She had not knocked. Had not asked for anything. Had not done anything except sit at her desk and work and be there, which was the thing she had been doing since day one.

Becky looked at her reflection.

—

The afternoon went the same way.

She worked. She got through two full sections of the closing argument and they were good – better than yesterday, which meant the argument was still building toward the right shape regardless of what was happening on the other side of her door.

She had always been able to work through things.

At three she called Irin.

“I need to tell you something,” she said.

“Tell me,” Irin said.

She told her. Not everything – she didn’t have everything yet. But the parking garage and the eleven seconds and everything she had put together since. She told it the way she presented evidence – clearly, in order, without editorialising.

When she finished Irin was quiet for a moment.

“How do you feel,” she said.

“I don’t know yet,” Becky said honestly.

“That’s fair.” A pause. “Are you safe?”

Becky looked at the closed door. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

“Do you believe that because it’s true or because-“

“Because it’s true,” Becky said. “Whatever else – that part I believe.”

Irin was quiet again. “Okay,” she said. “Call me tonight.”

“I will.”

She hung up.

She looked at the door.

—

At five the office started emptying.

She could hear it – the sounds of people finishing, the glass partition opening and closing, voices in the corridor. Heng knocked at five thirty and she opened the door and he gave her the filing confirmation for tomorrow and she thanked him and he looked at her with the expression he had when he wanted to say something and had decided not to and went home.

Noey said goodnight through the door.

The associates filtered out.

By seven it was quiet.

Becky sat at her desk.

The closing argument was open on her screen. The last section. She had been working on it all week and it was almost right – she could feel the rightness of it getting closer, the way you felt an argument assembling. She needed to finish it. Eight days.

She heard Freen.

Still there. Still at the desk outside. The quiet turning of a page. The pen on paper.

She had been there all day. Had sat outside a closed door all day without asking anything – not why the door was closed, not what came next, not anything. Had just stayed.

Becky looked at her screen.

She thought about the parking garage. Eleven seconds. The collar straightened. The keys held out.

She thought about the first morning and the coffee and how did you know and don’t make it a habit.

She thought about stars and rain and a jacket on the back of her chair.

She thought about my name is real. everything else-

She stood up.

She opened the door.

Freen looked up from her desk.

Becky looked at her. Freen looked back.

“I’m not ready to hear it yet,” Becky said. “All of it. I’m not ready yet.”

Freen nodded. “Okay.”

“But I will be.”

“I know,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her for a moment longer. Then she went back into her office. She left the door open.

She sat at her desk and opened the closing argument.

She read the first line of the last section.

It went in.

She kept going.

—

Outside through the open door Freen was still at her desk.

The light under the partition had that late evening quality – the overhead lights off, just the desk lamps, the city going dark outside the windows. Becky could see the edge of her desk if she looked up from her screen. She didn’t look up.

She wrote a sentence.

Then another.

Then three more that came quickly, one after the other, the way things came when you had been building toward them long enough.

She kept writing.

The office was quiet around her.

Freen was still there.

That was enough. For tonight, that was enough.