Nico called on Friday afternoon to ask where the cough-medicine stain came from.
He had been thinking about the cupboard. I had been thinking about it too, though neither of us had used the word together.
“You knocked a bottle over,” I said. “You were four.”
“You shouted at me.”
“I did.”
“I remember. Not the paper. You saying I could've ruined something important.”
I sat on the edge of my bed. My coat was still on. I had come home from giving a preliminary account to investigators, with Amelia beside me. We had confined it to what I knew. Nobody had promised to excuse it.
“It was important,” I said. “That wasn't why I shouted.”
“You thought I'd see it.”
“Yes.”
There was wind at his end. He was walking.
“Can I come over?”
“Yes.”
“I'm already downstairs.”
He brought no groceries this time. He kept his shoes on and sat on the floor with his back against the radiator, although there were two empty chairs.
“My dad knew?”
“Not about the paper.”
“Does anyone in this family get the whole story?”
“Your father and I weren't together then. You know that.”
“I know the part you told me.”
It was fair. Fair was not the same as painless.
I sat in the chair nearest him.
“You can ask.”
“I don't want to do an interview.”
“Then don't.”
For a while we listened to the radiator.
“I liked that you saved me,” he said.
“I did get you away.”
“I know. You don't have to point at the living person on the floor. I know I'm here.”
He pulled at a loose thread on his sleeve.
“I thought being here proved everything in the story was good.”
I had thought the same thing, but I did not offer that as a way to stand beside him.
“It doesn't,” I said.
He looked at me then.
“Would you do it again?”
I had heard that question in court, about acts committed in seconds and acts planned for months. People usually answered the question they wanted it to be: Are you sorry? Do you understand? Can you see the damage now?
Nico was asking whether I would put my name on the paper if that was the price of his seat.
“I don't know,” I said.
His face changed. Not toward forgiveness. Toward the fact that I had at last said something he could use.
“I think you would.”
“I might.”
“I think that's why I don't know what to do.”
I stayed in the chair. I did not come down to the floor and put my arms around him. He would have let me, probably. That did not mean it would have been for him.
“What are you doing now?” he asked.
“I've given them the paper. I've given them an account. I'm going to be asked more questions.”
“Will you get arrested?”
“Amelia's getting advice on the old events and what I said later. I don't have a promise.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don't know. It isn't a code for yes.”
He nodded, reluctantly.
“What about work?”
“I'm declining court assignments for the moment. There'll be questions about my credibility. I can't interpret in a room where everyone is looking at me instead of the person speaking.”
“So you don't get paid.”
“Not for those assignments.”
“That's stupid. You didn't suddenly forget Spanish.”
“No.”
The phone rang. We both looked at it. A number I did not know.
I let it go to voicemail.
Nico pushed himself up off the floor and stood by the window. A bus stopped below us. People got off one at a time, burdened with bags, looking toward wherever they had to go next.
“Do they know who was on the second boat?”
“They know who's on the list. That isn't the same thing.”
“Do we have a copy?”
“Amelia has the scanned copy they made.”
“Can I see it?”
“There are other people's names. I need to ask about sharing it.”
He nodded again, locked his phone and put it in his pocket.
“I'm not staying tonight,” he said.
“Okay.”
“But I'll call you.”
I wanted to ask when. I did not.
The voicemail was from a woman who said she was calling for the Rusk neighborhood committee.
She hoped I understood that good people were being hurt by speculation. She was not asking about the jury. She knew better than that. She wanted to know whether I would join a small private meeting to correct the misunderstandings now circulating in the community.
No pressure, she said. She gave me a number different from the one that had called.
I played it once to Amelia, then forwarded the original message as she requested, preserving the call log.
“They called the shop too,” Nico said when I told him. “A man. Said he worked for your lawyer and could save you a trip if I brought him the old papers. I told him to call you.”
“Did he give a name?”
“Paul. Mom, I didn't give him anything.”
Amelia was still on the line. She said she had sent nobody. She asked Nico for the shop's call log and his manager's number.
Then my phone lit with a picture. Nico outside the shop, unlocking the shutter. It had been taken that morning. Below it: We can spare him all this.
I wanted to delete it before he saw. Instead I set the phone between us and called the safety number the officer had given me. I read the message exactly. I sent the image in the form they requested and left the original on the phone.
Nico called his manager himself. I heard him say he couldn't close alone that night. It was the first thing all day he had asked another person to do for him.
Reed came to the apartment with an officer. He recorded our separate accounts and the numbers, then asked the local department to check the shop. Amelia sent the new contact to the court with the pending no-contact request. We agreed where Nico would stay and whom he would call if the man returned. No one told us the picture was probably nothing.
After they left, Nico moved his chair away from the window. I wanted to tell him he needn't. I moved mine beside it.
At eight Reed called back, with Amelia on the line. They wanted to confirm a date from my statement. A day I remembered because it was Nico's birthday, three days after we reached the first safe lodging.
“Are you certain about the birthday?” Reed asked.
“Yes.”
“And the twelve days before you learned people were missing?”
“That I counted from a calendar later. I wrote the date on the back of a telephone receipt. I still have it.”
“We'll arrange to see it. Don't add anything to it.”
“I know.”
The receipt was in the same cupboard as the other papers. I left it there and emailed Amelia its location.