She texted to ask if I wanted to meet at the airport.
Yes.
I was terrified. More of being talked out of going to see my sister than of my sister, but also of her: What will she do now? So I didn’t tell my barrister, only my husband. (Mainly so that if anything happens to me, he might know who is implicated.)
Now with Sam, I don’t even know how I feel about it “or how to feel about it.” He raises his brow.
Oh, give me a break. I drove straight down. I am dazed.
He will have to receive this one: he is my debrief.
“I felt so sorry for her,” I emphasise the ‘so’. “I didn’t know how to help. I wish I knew. She kept asking, ‘Why are you doing this?’ All I could say was I had no choice, which is exactly how I feel. She said I had. I wish she could see…”
He points out that my reflex toward my sister was sheer grief. So? “Not hatred, not contempt, not gloating. Not jealousy. Just grief.” So?..
“They built a whole case that you were cruel, cold, vindictive. Jealous. Out for revenge. And they’re still building it, write poison letters to judges and theorise you had been plotting and are now executing. They have your neighbours testify in those letters. They have your childhood friends testify.”
Nope, he doesn’t want to be my debrief.
“So — yes or no?” he presses.
Nope, he was never going to just sit and take it.
Yes, they did that, I nod.
“Not that any disproof of this is necessary, but what you felt at the airport is the cleanest disproof: you are not what they want you to believe you are.”
“And?” I blank.
“What they say you are and how you say you feel about them are completely incongruent.”
Face-to-face with my sister … he explains … who keeps being intent to do harm … he explains … I felt only sorry — FOR HER.
Well, Sam, she is my sister. This is my little sister we’re talking about. But to him, I say, “I didn’t expect that kind of conversation. I expected we’d try to work out a plan.”
And she? “I am a good mother. My daughter was happy. You don’t know how happy we were.” Again. Again. Again … She met me to say she’s a good mother? Not only. “Why are you doing this?” She had said that a lot. “You will not win.” Also a lot.
“You cannot win. Maybe you don’t know me? Or you don’t know your papa? Mama and papa and I will do anything … everything possible and impossible, legal and illegal. Even if we lose everything and we have to live in a hole in the ground, we will get my daughter back. No-one can take a child from a mother.”
Saying that gave me chills. “She looked so unwell, so lost, so …”
“Hostile?” he interrupted.
“Yes,” and then, “But she really suffers.”
“From what?” he pressed.
Hate, was the answer. There was Hate in her, cold, hopeless, dejected, desperate, determined, consuming.
“She is my little sister. It’s heartbreaking to see my sister like that. I held her hand. I walked her home. And this woman I saw today … she woman took my sister from me.”
“You are grieving your sister,” he says.
It’s true. I tear up a little. I just can’t cry.
It’s a wrap. I pick up my bag and make small talk about prep I’m doing for Year 6 students, who will be over in August for a kind of a new school integration day. I chose Jane Austen as the personage and role-play as format. He starts to smile slyly as I explain my plan for the event. As I head out, says, “Of all the Jane Austen scenes you could have built this around, you chose the proposal she accepts for security and retracts to keep independence.” Aha. “Mean anything to you?” Should it? “Walking away from the societally-safe-but-wrong match?” I stare. “You’ve done versions of that your whole life: the degree your father bought you never wanted, the family, your friend. You picked it because it was a dramatic scene — but it’s also the most you. The pattern finds you even in lesson planning.” And then, “Think about that.”
I laugh because it’s a little uncanny.
I will think about that.
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