2008
Dreyer offers Bobbie a ride. She thanks him, but explains that she does not want to take him out of his way and that she’ll get a taxi. He insists, and she wonders if perhaps because it went so badly with June on the stand, he is trying to make it up somehow. As they walk through the parking lot, he seems preoccupied and closed off, a side of Dreyer she hasn’t seen until today.
“That didn’t go particularly well, did it?” she says.
He unlocks his car, drops his heavy case into the backseat with what seems like more force than is necessary, and says, “No.”
His car is a boxy Audi diesel that chugs comfortably. Outside, a breeze clears away the heat and dust of the afternoon. In a different mood, Bobbie might have enjoyed the drive, the calm roads, the landscape on this pretty evening not so different from when she was a child. Nearly dinnertime, the sun is settling low in the sky, the temperature perfect for sitting outside. If she were here on a vacation she might unwind beneath the pergola at the inn with its manicured lawns and perfumed gardens, but her day has been a turmoil and she is not in a holiday mood. Her mind is alight with one thought: Her mother lied on the stand.
“Tell me again what happened,” Dreyer says.
“You already know.”
“Yes, but there may be a detail, however small, that will help.”
She tells Dreyer once again the history with Craig, with the crash, with its aftermath. She reminds him of the chain of events—not her mother’s version but her own. She feels doubt on Dreyer’s part, as though he may no longer be quite as willing to take her at her word. He doesn’t say anything to convey this, however. He nods as she speaks, driving assiduously along rural roads unfamiliar to him, relying on his GPS, never stating outright that he believes her or does not believe her. She watches him, eyes forward to the road, both hands on the wheel, his mouth clamped shut. She imagines him telling himself that it doesn’t matter what really happened but what he can win with.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she says. She wants him to say, I believe you, but all he does is nod. Suddenly she wants all the people in court—the judge and jury and everyone else—to say that they believe her. For years she has consoled herself with the notion that one day the truth would reveal itself, and now that the day has arrived she discovers the truth is not enough.
“It seems easy to get away with lying in court,” she says.
“It’s not easy,” Dreyer says. “And it’s not over.”
She hopes he will say something about how he sees the case going forward, but all he says is, “When there is no evidence and no other witnesses, lying outright is a good strategy for a witness. That is, if they’ve got the stomach for it.”
“I don’t have the stomach for lying,” she says, all the anger deflating within her, turning into a slosh of other emotions, bewilderment, despair. She feels an unworthy opponent to Craig, who would always lie, and now to her mother, who had made lying look easy. “I can only tell the truth.”
“That’s okay.” Dreyer’s tone conveys that he wants to end the conversation. Maybe he wants to distance himself from her. Maybe he is feeling a puncture in his professional pride. “That is all that is required of you,” he says.
“I’m finding that difficult to believe right now.”
Dreyer says, “You mustn’t come to any conclusions just yet. Your mother is back on the stand tomorrow. We get a second shot.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want me to get you in the morning?”
“I don’t think so,” she says. “I may not go at all. I don’t want to watch as she perjures herself. God knows what she’ll make up next.”
“She may find it challenging to keep track of what she’s said. That’s what we hope anyway.”
“In which case she’ll get in all sorts of other trouble, and I’m not sure I want to watch that, either.”
Dreyer takes in a breath, then blows it out slowly. “She’s taken a very specific position that is not in your favor,” he says.
“She wasn’t always like this, you know,” Bobbie says. She recalls her mother as she was so many years ago. She kept recipes in card files, ironed the pleats in her skirts, instructed Bobbie not to slur her words, not to slump in her chair at dinner, not to lie. Ever. “But then, Craig came along.”
Dreyer nods. “Well, he’s sweating now,” he says.
She thought of Craig in the courtroom. His height and size gave him such presence and he seemed completely in control today, solid in his chair. No matter what was said of him, good or bad, he did not show any sign of his own feelings. He did not speak, except to occasionally whisper to Elstree. He did not fidget or even shift in his seat. “He doesn’t look like he’s sweating,” Bobbie says.
“Of course not,” Dreyer says. “He’s a criminal.”
It occurs to her all of a sudden that she has never heard anyone say that about Craig, that he was a criminal. It feels like an enormous release, as though a latch has finally been unlocked, a door opened, allowing light to pour in. A criminal, she thinks. She almost laughs out loud. Of course he is.
They pull into Mrs. Campbell’s driveway and she can hear the crunch and pop of pebbles beneath the Audi’s fat tires. In the next moment, the inn with its pale painted timber and large sash windows, its borders of flowers that spill onto the flagstone path, comes into view. With the sun setting spectacularly in the field beyond, the colors reflecting in the windows, the house appears to glow.
Dreyer says, “Get some rest. Don’t talk to your mother. I don’t care what she tries, even if she sets up a ladder and crawls through the window—”
“I won’t talk to her,” Bobbie says. “There’s nothing to say. We are done. We were done a long time ago, but now…” What she realizes, even as she declares its end, is how she’d always thought that her mother loved her, and how much she longed for that love.
He takes a moment to study her. “I’m worried about you,” he says. “Should I be?”
She thinks it is sweet that he should be concerned. And maybe he should be worried about her. “I’m fine,” she tells him. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“Actually, you look pretty tough. But assuming your mother lied—”
“She did.”
“Okay, so assuming that’s the case, she lied in the weirdest direction. Parents will lie in favor of their children all the time. But not against. That must be hard.”
And there it is, a simple observation that sums up everything that is wrong now. She says, “It’s Craig’s influence. He gets people to do what he wants. I’ve never understood how.”
Dreyer shakes his head slowly back and forth. He looks more relaxed than he has all day, but tired, too. “How did he persuade your mother to let him come and live with you guys in the first place?”
“How did he persuade her?” Bobbie repeats. She almost laughs. “It wasn’t like that.” She smiles at Dreyer. He’s a sweet man, she thinks, and far less worldly than one might expect of a trial lawyer. “He didn’t even need to ask.”