Chương 10
Anna knew that.
She feared it.
“They’ll make me sound crazy.”
Daniel sat beside her on a park bench.
“They’ll try to make you sound unreliable.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No.”
“It feels the same.”
He could not argue.
A boy rode past on a bicycle.
Anna watched him go.
“I don’t remember everything.”
“You don’t have to.”
“They’ll ask.”
“Yes.”
“What if I say something wrong?”
“Then you say you were wrong.”
She looked at him.
“That easy?”
“No.”
He picked at the label on his water bottle.
“But you don’t have to become perfect to tell the truth.”
Anna stared ahead.
Daniel added, “Also, for what it’s worth, Victor’s memory suddenly gets terrible whenever anybody asks about the locks.”
She smiled faintly.
The day she decided to testify, she did not tell Margaret first.
She told Harris.
Then Daniel.
Margaret found out that evening.
She tried to hide her fear.
Failed.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
“You can change your mind.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Margaret sat across from her.
Anna was eating cereal for dinner.
“You’re saying ‘I know’ like you want me to stop talking.”
“I do.”
Margaret closed her mouth.
Anna ate another spoonful.
Then said, “I need him to hear me say it when he can’t close a door.”
Margaret looked down at her hands.
That was the end of the discussion.
Testifying took two days.
Anna wore a dark blue dress she chose herself.
No locket.
Margaret noticed only after they entered the courthouse.
“Where is it?”
Anna touched her bare throat.
“Home.”
“You never leave it.”
“I did today.”
Margaret wanted to ask why.
She didn’t.
On the stand, Anna was not eloquent.
That helped.
She forgot dates.
Corrected herself.
Asked for questions to be repeated.
Once she snapped at the defense attorney.
Once she cried and became angry because she was crying.
When asked why she had not simply walked away from Victor’s farm earlier, she stared at the lawyer.
“I did.”
“You attempted to leave?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“More than five?”
“I don’t know.”
“More than ten?”
“I said I don’t know.”
The attorney nodded.
“You were able to walk off the property.”
“Sometimes.”
“And on those occasions, Mr. Mercer brought you back?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Car. Once truck.”
“Did he use a weapon?”
“No.”
“Did he threaten you with a weapon?”
“No.”
“Did he physically force you into the vehicle?”
Anna hesitated.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“He’d say police were coming.”
The attorney paused.
“That frightened you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you had prior negative experiences with law enforcement.”
The prosecutor objected.
The judge allowed a narrower question.
The defense continued carefully.
“You believed police might arrest you?”
“Yes.”
“Because Mr. Mercer told you that?”
“And because it happened before.”
The courtroom became quiet.
The attorney had opened a door he did not entirely want.
Anna explained a previous arrest under an alias after a street altercation years earlier.
Charges had been dismissed.
Victor knew about it.
He used it.
“He said if they ran my prints, they’d think I was lying about being Anna.”
“Were you lying?”
“No.”
“Did you have proof?”
Anna touched the edge of the witness stand.
“No.”
“Mr. Mercer told you he was trying to help obtain proof.”
“At first.”
“When did you stop believing him?”
Anna looked across the courtroom.
Victor was seated beside counsel.
He did not look at her.
“When he started needing me to be scared.”
The defense attorney paused.
It was not a perfect line.
Anna had not rehearsed it.
Margaret knew because Anna hated rehearsing.
But it was true.
The lawyer changed direction.
Later he asked about the coop.
“You entered voluntarily sometimes.”
“Yes.”
“To feed chickens?”
“Yes.”
“To collect eggs?”
“Yes.”
“So the coop itself was not always used to imprison you.”
“No.”
“And the outside latch had a legitimate purpose.”
Anna frowned.
“For chickens.”
“Yes.”
“Not for people.”
The attorney paused.
“Of course.”
Anna looked at the jury.
“He made me kneel by the door so I could hear him close it.”
The prosecutor’s head lifted.
Margaret stopped breathing.
This detail had not appeared in earlier interviews.
The defense attorney noticed.
“You never told investigators that.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I forgot.”
“Until now.”
“Yes.”
He let the silence work.
Anna’s face tightened.
Margaret wanted to stand up and scream.
Instead she watched her daughter breathe.
The attorney asked, “Is it possible other things you remember now are also inaccurate?”
Anna looked at him.
“Yes.”
The answer startled everyone.
Including the lawyer.
Anna continued.
“I get things wrong.”
The prosecutor did not move.
Anna glanced at Victor.
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t lock the door.”
The defense attorney recovered.
“But your memory is imperfect.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
He sat.
Margaret thought Anna had lost.
Daniel whispered, “That was good.”
She looked at him.
“How?”
“Because she told the truth.”
The jury did not convict Victor on every charge.
That was difficult for Margaret to accept.
They convicted him of unlawful imprisonment, coercion, assault-related offenses, identity-related fraud, and financial crimes connected to his attempts to monetize Anna’s identity.
They acquitted him on one aggravated kidnapping count.
The verdict took almost two days.
When the clerk read the first guilty finding, Margaret reached for Anna.
Then stopped.
Anna saw.
She took Margaret’s hand.
Victor was remanded into custody.
He turned once before leaving.
Not toward Margaret.
Toward Anna.
She looked back.
For years she had imagined what she might say.
Nothing came.
Victor’s face looked older.
Tired.
Ordinary.
Anna squeezed Margaret’s hand.
Then Victor disappeared through the side door.
Outside the courthouse, reporters waited behind barriers.
Anna had prepared a statement.
She did not read it.
She walked past them.
A reporter shouted, “Anna, do you forgive him?”
She stopped.
Margaret’s stomach dropped.
Anna turned.
“No.”
Then she kept walking.
That became the quote everyone used.
It annoyed her.
“They make it sound dramatic.”
May you like
Daniel was driving them back to the apartment.
“It was dramatic.”
