For obvious reasons, Sam had only learned these details much later. Even during the first month of her recovery, she could not retain the sequence of events. She had vague memories of Charlie sitting on her hospital bed repeating the story of their survival over and over again because Sam’s short-term memory was a sieve. Her eyes were still bandaged. She was blind, helpless. She would reach out for Charlie’s hand, slowly identify her voice, and continually ask the same questions.
Where am I? What happened? Why isn’t Gamma here?
Each time, dozens, perhaps over one hundred times, Charlie had answered.
You are in the hospital. You were shot in the head. Gamma was murdered.
Then Sam would fall asleep, or a certain number of minutes would pass, and she would reach out for Charlie, asking her again—
Where am I? What happened? Why isn’t Gamma here?
Gamma is dead. You are alive. Everything is going to be okay.
Sam had not considered for many years the emotional consequences of her thirteen-year-old sister having to tell and retell their story. She did know that after a while, Charlie’s tears had stopped. The emotion had abated, or at least managed to conceal itself. While Charlie exhibited no reluctance to talk about the events, she had begun to relay them at a remove. Not exactly as if everything had happened to someone else, but as if she wanted to make it clear that the tragedy had lost its grip on her.
The affect came across most clearly in the trial transcripts. At various times in Sam’s life, she had read the twelve hundred fifty-eight page document as an exercise in memory. This happened to me, then this happened to me, then this is how I managed to live.
Charlie’s testimony during the prosecutor’s examination was dry, more like a reporter narrating a story. This happened to Gamma. This happened to Sam. This is what Zachariah Culpepper tried to do. This is what Miss Heller said when she opened her back door.
Fortunately, Judith Heller’s testimony served to color between some of Charlie’s stark lines. On the stand, the woman had described her shock when she’d found a blood-covered, terrified little girl standing on her porch. Charlie had been shaking so hard that at first she could not speak. When she was finally inside, finally able to form words with her mouth, inexplicably, she had asked for a bowl of ice cream.
Miss Heller had not known what to do but comply while her father called the police. Nor did she know that the ice cream would make Charlie sick. She had served two bowls before Charlie ran to the toilet. It was only through the closed bathroom door that Charlie had told Miss Heller that she thought that her mother and sister were dead.
A loud squawking distracted Sam from her thoughts.
Laurens had hung up minutes ago, but Sam was still holding the phone. She put down the receiver. Her hand lingered.
Consider the etymology of the phrase “hang up the phone.”
The Huffington Post page automatically reloaded. The Alexander family was giving a live news conference.
Sam turned the sound down low. She watched the video. A man named Rick Fahey spoke on behalf of the family. She listened to his pleas for privacy, knowing they would fall on deaf ears. Sam supposed the one silver lining of being in a coma was that after being shot, she did not have to listen to endless speculation about her case on the news.
On the video, Fahey stared directly at the camera. He said, “That’s what Kelly Wilson is. A cold-blooded murderer.”
Fahey’s head turned. He exchanged a look with a man who could only be Ken Coin. Instead of his ill-fitting police uniform, Coin was wearing a shiny, navy blue suit. Sam knew that he was the current district attorney for Pikeville, but she wasn’t sure where she had obtained that information.
Regardless, the look between the two men confirmed the obvious, that this was going to be a death penalty case. That explained Rusty’s involvement. He had long been a vocal opponent of the death penalty. As a defense attorney, as someone who had been instrumental in the exonerations of convicted men, he believed that the chance for mistake was too high.
From the Culpepper trial transcripts, Sam knew that her father had spoken from the stand for almost a full hour, delivering a moving, impassioned plea to spare Zachariah Culpepper on the grounds that the state had no moral authority to take a life.
Charlie had argued just as forcefully for death.
Sam had fallen somewhere in the middle. She was at that point unable to clearly verbalize her thoughts. Her letter to the court had requested life in prison for Zachariah Culpepper. This was not a show of compassion. At the time, Sam was a resident of the Shepherd Spinal Center in Atlanta. The people who assisted her through the arduous months of recovery were professional and compassionate, but Sam had felt like a rabbit trapped in a snare.
She could not get in or out of bed without assistance.
She could not use the toilet without assistance.
She could not leave her room without assistance.
She could not eat when she wanted to eat, or consume what she wanted to eat.
Because her fingers could not navigate a button or zip, she could not wear the clothes that she wanted to wear.
Because she could not lace her sneakers, she was forced to wear ugly, Velcroed orthopedic shoes.
Washing herself, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, taking a walk, going outside into the sunlight or the rain, were all done at someone else’s pleasure.
Rusty, citing his high moral principles, had wanted the judge to give Zachariah Culpepper life in prison. Charlie, burning with a need for revenge, had wanted a sentence of death. Sam had asked that Zachariah Culpepper be sentenced to a long, wretched existence, deprived of any sense of self-determination, because she had learned first hand exactly what it felt like to be a prisoner.
Maybe they had all gotten their wish. Because of appeals and temporary reprieves and legal maneuverings, Zachariah Culpepper was currently one of the longest-serving inmates on Georgia’s death row.
He continued to profess his innocence to anyone who would listen. He continued to claim that Charlie and Sam had colluded to frame him and his brother because he owed Rusty several thousand dollars in legal bills.
In retrospect, Sam should have argued for death.
She closed the browser on her computer.
She opened a blank email and sent apologies to her friend, begging off their birthday drinks tonight. She told Eldrin to hold her calls. She put on her reading glasses.
She returned her attention to the narrow plated pintle hinge.
When Sam looked up from her computer, darkness had turned her windows black. Eldrin was gone. The office was quiet. Not for the first time, she was alone on the floor.
She had also sat too long without moving. She performed some seated stretches. Her body was stiff, but eventually, determinedly, she was able to stand. She unfolded the collapsible cane she kept in her bottom desk drawer. She wrapped her scarf around her neck. She considered calling a car, but by the time one showed up, she could walk the six blocks home.
She regretted the decision the moment she stepped outside.
The wind off the river was cutting. Sam gripped the scarf in one hand. Her other hand held tight to the cane. Her briefcase and purse weighed down the crook of her arm. She should have waited for the car. She should have had drinks with her friend. She should have done a lot of things differently today.
The night doorman wished Sam happy birthday as she entered her building. She stopped to thank him, to ask after his children, but her leg ached too much to stand.
She rode up in the elevator alone.
She stared at her reflection in the back of the doors.
A solitary, white-haired figure stared back.
The doors slid open. Fosco rolled and stretched on the floor as Sam walked into the kitchen. She made herself eat some leftover Thai from Saturday night’s birthday dinner party. The barstool was uncomfortable. She sat on the edge, both feet on the floor. Pain spread up the side of her leg like a hot
blade splaying open the muscle.
She looked at the clock. Too early to go to bed. Too tired to concentrate on work. Too exhausted to read the new book she had received as a birthday present.
At her old apartment in Chelsea, she and Anton had eschewed television-watching. Sam stared at screens all day. There was only so much blue light that her eyes could take before a headache began to gnaw behind her eyes.
The new apartment had come with a large television already installed in the den. Sam had often found herself drawn to the dark room, one of those windowless boxes that builders called bonus spaces because they could not legally call them bedrooms.
Sam sat down on the couch. She placed an empty wine glass on the coffee table. Beside this, she put a bottle of 2011 Tenuta Poggio San Nicolò.
Anton’s favorite wine.
Fosco jumped into her lap. Sam absently scratched between his ears. She studied the elegant label on the wine bottle, the delicate scrollwork around the border, the simple red wax seal at the center.