I know what that feels like.
We have all these movies and shows obsessed with the justice system. They give this impression that everything happens immediately, the trial and the investigation happening at the same time, cops desperately getting some new piece of significant evidence to the prosecutor just in time for the big reveal and dramatic closing statements. They make it look like a conviction is something the victims have in hand to help them start the grieving process.
It’s bullshit, of course, but until now, I didn’t realize just how far it is from the truth.
Thirty years of crimes causes a lot of delays, especially if the asshole is rich and has a really good legal team. The destruction of the Garden—it never occurred to me that could make things harder. It was our way out. It also destroyed the code-locked doors that kept us prisoner, so the defense is trying to claim that we were free to come and go and we chose to stay. The prosecution is trying to put a name (and proof) to every victim, but some of the bodies were destroyed in the explosion and some weren’t even in the Garden, but out on the property. You’d think the rest of the bodies on display would be sufficient.
Vic is trying so hard not to let any of us get discouraged, but he told us recently to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we could see the anniversary of our escape before the actual trial starts.
Even if they only sought justice for those of us who’ve survived, they have so much proof, and it might not even matter. Eddison says the defense has a whole roster of doctors and shrinks ready to delay things further.
Eddison actually scolded me once for wishing the Gardener had died in the explosion. He said a trial was the way for us all to get justice.
Is that what any of this is? Justice? Girls afraid to leave their homes for all the attention they’re getting, harassed at school and work and therapy? A boy who swears being in love absolves him of all sin? A man who might escape sentencing to live in an expensive nursing facility the rest of his life?
People keep telling me to be patient, to wait for justice.
Even if he gets convicted, even if he gets sentenced to life without parole or even death, how is it justice? We have to keep opening our wounds for everyone, bleeding again and again and again, knowing full well what he did to us; how is a verdict of guilty going to change any of that?
What kind of justice puts a twelve-year-old girl on the stand before court and cameras and makes her talk about being raped?
If they found the man who killed Chavi, do you think it would help you? Is this just me being cynical?
I really am trying to believe in this justice thing, but I can’t help but think how much easier this would be if all three MacIntosh men had died that night.
If there’s not enough left of Chavi for her to care about justice, why should the rest of us need it so badly? What can we even do with it?
I don’t have an answer for Inara; I don’t even have an answer for me.
But I wonder, sometimes, if it had been me that died that night, if it had been Chavi left behind to mourn and change: given how much she loved the idea of grace, would that be enough to preserve her belief in justice?
Eddison pulls into the parking lot, looks up at the stone chapel, and shudders. To his dying day, he will never understand why Priya doesn’t hate churches after how she found her sister’s body. He knows the no-longer-a-church back in Boston held dear memories for both of them, knows that she looks at the windows and thinks of sunny afternoons with Chavi, but he can’t quite wrap his brain around her continued love for little churches with great windows.
Priya walks out in her long winter coat, the one she bought purely because it sweeps dramatically down the stairs like a Disney villain and makes her mother laugh. Those two have a relationship far outside his ability to explain. She ducks into the passenger side, tucking her camera bag and a stainless-steel mug around the base of the seat before she sits. “Welcome to Colorado, population: frozen.”
“What makes it worse than D.C.?”
“Mountains.”
He watches as she leans her head back against the seat, closing her eyes. “You okay?”
“Tired. Nightmares.” She cracks her neck, settles almost sideways against the window so she can see him. “Getting kind of pissed.”
He nods. “Oreos?”
“I’ve been okay, actually.” But she’s frowning, twisting her gloved hands in her lap. “Tempted, yes, but so far, I’m okay.”
“Scared?”
“Yes.”
He appreciates that she doesn’t feel the need to mask it.
The Sravastis’ rental is a blandly nice house on a street of blandly nice houses, none of them particularly distinct. Where some of the neighbors have tried to add personality with flags or statues, the Sravastis’ house has a bleakly impersonal fa?ade. He can’t say he’s surprised by it.
Before following her into the house, he stops at the front step, looking up at the overhang. He can see the camera, the lens aimed where it can take in the widest view possible. There’s no light to show whether or not it’s on, which he likes. Helps it to be a bit more discreet.
“He doesn’t look out of place,” she tells him, pulling off her heavy coat and hanging it in the closet.
“What’s that?”
“Whoever’s leaving the flowers. Both times they’ve been left in broad daylight, so whoever it is, he doesn’t look out of place in this neighborhood. There are people on the street who work from home, or just don’t work, and he doesn’t stand out as not belonging.”
“Tell Finney that?”
“No, but I told Sterling and Archer.” She holds a hand out for his coat. He pulls off his gloves and scarf and shoves them into pockets before giving it to her. “Coffee?”
“I’ll make it.” Because he’s had Priya’s coffee, and it definitely tastes like it was made by someone who doesn’t drink coffee. It’s an experience he’d rather not repeat.
“I’ll meet you in the living room, then.” Leaning down, she reaches into the small drawer of the spindly table and pulls out a box of matches. She strikes a match without looking and lights the squat red candle as she presses a kiss to the worn corner of Chavi’s glittery gold frame.
After she heads upstairs, he looks at the picture. Chavi was significantly darker than Deshani and Priya, almost as dark as her father, but Christ, she looks like Priya. Or maybe Priya looks like her. He’s seen her put on her makeup with nothing but a tiny compact, never faltering with the heavy black liner or the soft silver, white, and blue shimmers.
How much of that is because she sees her sister looking back at her from the mirror?
Shaking his head, he walks down the hall to drop his computer bag on the couch and turns into the kitchen. Priya may not like coffee but her mother mainlines it, and sure enough the coffeemaker is the most well-loved element of the kitchen. He has to fuss over it a moment, figuring out the settings because Deshani has something against basic coffee, but it doesn’t take long for it to start doing its thing. He can hear Priya come back downstairs, settling into the living room.
When he walks back into the living room, he nearly drops the mug. Priya is stretched out on her back on the carpet, dark hair in a puddle around her, her legs crossed at the ankles and propped on the arm of the couch. Her hands are clasped against her stomach. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath to push back the images from the files he’s gone over often enough to memorize.
“Blue,” she says.
“What now?”
“Chavi liked red; I’m all blue.”
He opens his eyes, looks for the blue in her hair, around her eyes, the blue spark of the crystals at her nose and between her eyes. Her red lipstick is a few shades darker than all the pictures of Chavi, but she’s blue and silver, not red and gold, and maybe it shouldn’t make as much of a difference as it does, but it helps.