The Witness: A Novel (53 page)

“To settle my stomach,” she explained.

She had her hair trimmed and shaped, but there was no man to admire it except her dad. Her parents had been busy since hearing the news of her return, and by the end of her first week home, she had already been to the dentist, the family doctor, and her first appointment with a psychologist.

Sergeant Casey had given her a copy of her medical report, which detailed her injuries and treatment. Dr. Morgan, the family physician, took most of it in stride, although he could not entirely mask his pity. He patted her on the shoulder and assured her that he understood her nervousness. He must have—he did not make her disrobe completely for the examination.

She gave the psychologist, Dr. Abramson, a copy of her medical history also, hoping that having the record would spare her from having to relate everything. He seemed a little lost with all the medical data, preferring to focus on how she felt. Dislocated. Lost. Lonely. She mentioned Colin’s love and then regretted exposing it to Abramson’s psychological scrutiny. She looked repeatedly at her amethyst watch, deciding not to disclose who had given it to her.

On Saturday morning when her mother took her shopping, she bought a variety of postcards to send Colin and then went into the department store. She was trying on a blouse in one of the fitting rooms when she heard her mother gasp and then go suddenly silent. She had seen Jenny’s shoulder and the flaws on her torso. Jenny sank down on the little stool in the dressing room, shaken by her mother’s shock. “Mother, I was badly beaten, and I had surgery, you know that,” she said, her enthusiasm for shopping completely deflated. “There are marks from everything.”

Saturday evening she put on her baseball cap and went to a game with her dad. It was the most crowded place she had been since her return home, and although she enjoyed the play on the field, hearing so many American accents did not make her feel less like a foreigner. And she missed Colin’s call from London.

Coming home should have been comfortable, like putting on a pair of old shoes, but Simon had been right: You can’t go home again. These shoes chafed. That night she dreamed a gunman fired at her. She had her bulletproof vest on, but it didn’t help, and the sergeant wasn’t there to stop the bleeding.

Sunday she attended church with her family. The minister’s text for the day centered on the love passages from the New Testament. He used Christ’s death as the perfect illustration of love, adding that by following the guidance of Scripture, we could also demonstrate the depth of our love. Jenny’s mind heard a new voice inside her, telling her that Colin was patient and kind. Colin was not rude or easily angered. He was a policeman—he certainly didn’t delight in evil! Why had she been in such a hurry to leave him? She had his Bible but not his handkerchief. She had to settle for the stale Kleenex in the bottom of her purse.

After church her parents spoke to her about her plans. When she told them that graduate school was no longer a consideration, they encouraged her to think about what kind of work she would like to do. At her age they felt she should be self supporting, and the routine of employment, having office hours, would settle her. Practical shoes, she thought. She tried to imagine a work environment in which she’d feel comfortable—safe—but when she mentioned the police department as a possibility, her parents thought she was joking. When the conversation was over, she called Colin, preferring to think about romantic shoes.

She didn’t tell him how difficult it was—how her parents’ expectations, not unreasonable, seemed like a mountain too steep to climb and how adrift she felt in a room with too little wall space to mount her British flag. Hearing his voice was reassuring, even with the transatlantic echo, but it wasn’t enough. Severing the phone connection gave her an emptiness that ached, like having a part of you surgically removed and still feeling the slice of the scalpel when it was gone.

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D
uring her second week home, Jenny went to see college friends who had settled in the Houston area. Mandy Edwards had married before either she or her husband had graduated from school, and they had a baby already, a baby girl. Mandy was excited and proud, and Jenny was happy for her but felt the chasm between them widen. Mandy didn’t know what to say about Jenny’s experience, and Jenny didn’t want to tell her how dangerous the world was for girls.

Emily Richards was as ebullient as ever, laughing about how she’d spent her year in the company of children while Jenny had had adult
conversation, at least if you could consider cops to be capable of adult conversation. Jenny tried to explain what the men meant to her, how wise and supportive they had been. They weren’t the dreaded enforcers of speed limits on holiday weekends, but the difference between death and life, fear and safety, chaos and control. You were involved in an in-depth study of the British legal system, I’ll grant you that, Emily had replied, but you don’t have to get emotional.

Her second appointment with Dr. Abramson went less well than the first. She told him about Danny, Brian, and Simon, and how close she had become to them. She described Hunt’s irreverence. Abramson agreed that they were good men but suggested that since their job was over, her dependence on them was unhealthy. He explained that disengaging was an important factor in moving forward. If she had been unable to say good-bye to Simon in person, writing him a letter would be a useful exercise, even if she didn’t mail it. Say good-bye when he had finally told her his name? It was unthinkable. She had released too much already. What did Dr. Abramson know about loss? She’d write
him
a letter. “Buh-bye,” as they said on the British chat shows.

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W
hen Jenny refused a third session with the psychiatrist, her parents took her to see their minister, Walter William Keith. She thought of him as the man with three first names, but the congregation affectionately called him Walter Will, because in the short time he’d been with them, they’d learned that no matter what needed to be done, Walter would pitch in.

“Your parents have told me how difficult this past year has been for you,” he said. “How can I help?”

“Everyone wants me to forget it and move on,” she told the trim man who had looked taller in the pulpit. His liturgical robe, which had hidden his slight frame, hung in the corner of his office. “And I can’t, because it changed me. With my friends—their futures seem so bright, and I’m a real-life law and order victim, not an entertaining TV plot. I don’t really want them to know how violence feels, but I’m not over it. I’m different, and it’s lonely.”

“They mean no harm, but trust comes so easily to them, doesn’t it? Jennifer, sometimes we have to forgive others their innocence. More than that, not spoil it.”

“How do you know?”

“I have alcohol-related violence in my family.” He paused. “I was affected by it, but I’m not defined by it.”

“Is that why you became a minister?”

“I sought peace, and Someone I could trust. Who do you trust?”

“My family, sort of, but they’re not on the same page with me. The guys who protected me are, but Dr. Abramson said I should stop thinking about them.”

“You must know them very well.” He leaned back in his chair, wanting her to know he wouldn’t rush her. “Tell me about them.”

She described the ones she knew best, the commitment they had made to stay with her, the hard times they’d come through together. She told him about Danny and how much she wanted to hear his laugh; Brian, patient with her fear; how tough Simon had been but how they had come to respect each other. Even Hunt, who didn’t change his behavior when he was around her, who treated her like she was normal. And Colin—faithful, considerate, loving, with enough hope for both of them.

“The connections God establishes aren’t meant to be broken.”

“God chose them?”

“Of course. God knew what you needed.”

“How do you know God was a part of it?”

“Because when you talk about them, your face relaxes. And they made sacrifices for you, which is a godly thing to do.”

“They were so good to me, and I didn’t deserve any of it.”

“God’s grace is always unmerited, Jennifer. And His grace is often accompanied by peace, a sense of inner calm despite stormy circumstances.”

“I felt that, sometimes, when I was with them.”

“Jennifer, God works through His people. When people truly listen, it’s a sign of God’s presence. When they don’t judge. When they accept your love without having to shape it to meet their own needs. When their actions make you want to give something back.”

“It looks like you gave something back,” she said, gesturing toward his swollen thumb.

“Habitat for Humanity,” he smiled. “Our spiritual beliefs can lead us to actions of all sorts, and I have witnesses that my tools were effective, at least some of the time.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “The Bible is a kind of hammer, you know—we can use it to drive our beliefs home.”

Colin had given her his Bible. “I don’t know where to start,” she confessed.

“Start at the end, with Revelation 21:5: ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Or if you prefer the Old Testament, Ezekiel 36:26: ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…’ God lives through His Word and through prayer, and we can also experience Him in our relationships with others.”

“Will the nightmares stop? If I pray?”

“You still need healing, I think, although your protection officers began the process without realizing it. If you’d had female officers, your trust of men would have come much more slowly. Regarding the nightmares—time will tell.”

No quick fix, as Simon would say.

“It’ll help if you reach out to Him—to someone—when they occur.”

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T
hat night she dreamed that she was in a dark room, and the darkness had substance. She cried out for Colin, but he couldn’t hear her. She woke in a panic, sweating and shaking. It was four o’clock in the morning. But it was mid-morning in London! She called him, and for the first time, she cried on the phone, telling him that she missed him, she needed him, and she wished she hadn’t left so quickly. “Home isn’t home, Colin. It’s not the haven I thought it would be. Love and acceptance aren’t the same.”

“For me they are.”

She slept late, and her family went to church without her. After Sunday dinner—served in the middle of the day, just the way Brian had always done it—her parents again spoke to her about her future, stressing their love but pointing out that the violence against her had happened in September the previous year. Perhaps it was time for her to stop talking so much about the English police and start focusing on the present. Nine months ago, Jenny thought: long enough for a baby to be born. What have I birthed?

That night when Colin called, she told him that she was having to appear in another trial after all, this time as the defendant, and there were way too many judges. “You never judged me,” she said. “Not once, not matter how bad it got. And I hurt you, and I’m so, so sorry.”

It was very late in London, and he sounded tired, but he spoke of understanding and comfort. “This has been a crisis for your family as well as for you. They almost lost you, more than once. That makes some persons hold on more tightly.”

“You didn’t.”

“Jenny, sometimes love is letting someone go.”

“Not for me.”

“We’ll sort this out together then. Jen? Together.”

C
olin looked over at Jenny, asleep in the airline seat, her face relaxed, her cheeks still slightly flushed from the champagne, her hand in his. When the plane bound for London had lifted off the runway, he’d felt a surge of hope. Gravity had released them—perhaps she would be released from her misgivings as well. The plane was high above the clouds now, and the roar of the engines was softer, soothing even, a sign that he and Jenny were on their way together. The sky’s the limit for us, he thought.

When he had arrived in Houston three days earlier, he hadn’t been certain he could win her over. Then he came through customs and spied her, his heart skipped a beat, and he knew he must convince her that they could overcome any obstacles that lay ahead of them. Her hair was a bit shorter and more graceful, her shirt Royal Mail red, tied at the waist. He’d never seen her in shorts, and he approved heartily of her tan legs and red sandals. Her face was tan also, and although it put the narrow scar on her cheek in sharper relief, he felt unreasonably proud when he saw it. She had been laughing and crying and had hugged him as if she didn’t ever want to let him go.

Houston was flat, and her home was correspondingly a single elevation ranch-style design, the southwestern influence apparent in the colours and the comfortable informality of the furnishings. Mrs. Jeffries was taller and rounder than Jenny, with curlier hair. Jenny was poised and happy, teasing her brothers good-naturedly. Over a meal of potato and leek soup, pecan-crusted salmon, and spinach salad with strawberries and black pepper, they quizzed him about his work. He described the concept of policing by consent that governed the actions of the Metropolitan Police. Then he fielded questions about their lack of firearms, explaining that they didn’t consider themselves to be lacking, since their skills and training were sufficient for most situations and they could call upon specialist units when necessary.

“Like the ones that protected Jenny?” Matt asked.

“Exactly, yes,” he responded.

On Friday Jenny took him to an upscale shopping mall, where they wandered about hand in hand, stopping for a late lunch at La Madeleine,
a country French restaurant near the ice arena. Over a plate of Caesar salad, he asked her to go back with him, confessing that he had already reserved a seat for her on his return flight.

“I love you,” he said. “I want you to come home with me.”

“Colin, I’m not sure how I feel.”