“I have put you in danger already. I caused problems between you and your husband. Now my cousin and his family are suffering because of me.”
“Wait a minute.” Jessica stood and moved closer to Amina, lowering her voice. “I took this case willingly, and we are in this together.”
“When we first met here, in this coffee shop, I said I would work with you. Do you remember?”
She hadn’t forgotten. The hangover, the intense eyes from the small woman who’d sat across from her, and her own insecurities were fresh in her mind.
“And you said I could change my mind.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I could change my mind about working with you. I have changed my mind.”
“But your interview is next week.”
A nearby patron swiveled her head at Jessica’s sharp tone. Amina consented to move to a back table for more privacy.
“You have been a great help, but I will do this by myself now.”
“We’ve put a lot of time in this. I can’t even count the hours of research, just to understand what’s going on in Syria. And Danny offered to search for your fam—”
“This isn’t about you or the amount of time you put in. Did you ever really want this case? Why did you do it? To make yourself look good? To feel good about yourself? For me, this is about survival and living with myself. This is my decision.”
The drone of the coffee grinder reverberated through Jessica’s bones, amplifying the gut punch of Amina’s words.
Amina’s hands pressed against the table, her resolution clear.
“Okay,” Jessica said. “I will get you the paperwork we’ve finalized, and you can move forward yourself. I don’t have anything from Najlaa, though. Were you able to get through to her in Lebanon and send her the information I prepared so she can provide an affidavit?” Amina had insisted on handling communications with her doctor friend.
“I did reach her, but I will not ask her to do that.” Amina’s hands relaxed on her lap. Hearing Jessica back off seemed to calm her. “She’s already doing so much for our community. So much, and I am doing nothing.” Amina cut off Jessica’s attempted interjection about Amina’s help with the refugees and the need for some documentary support for her claim. “Najlaa is in a delicate position as an outsider in Lebanon. You know they do not have official refugee camps. Even though she has a position in the medical clinic, she is still a refugee herself.”
“But she can help your case, even if you don’t want me to anymore. Can she send a letter even if she doesn’t want to go to the embassy to get the affidavit notarized?”
“You are not hearing me. I don’t want to endanger her situation more than it is. I will succeed or fail on my own and will not be contacting her about this again.”
“I advise you not to sever ties,” Jessica blurted. “It’s not worth it.”
The intense eyes from her first meeting with Amina made an appearance. The suspicion deep within them returned, cutting to Jessica’s core. The message was clear. “How dare you advise me about severed ties?”
JESSICA THREW HERSELF on the bed in exasperation. She’d told Danny she would stay home tonight and watch a movie with him, but he had insisted she go to book club after he’d seen how stressed she was from her meeting with Amina. He’d taken the news in stride that she hadn’t gotten to talk to Amina about using her photos for a search, assuring her that things would all work out. Then he’d said, “Please, go have a glass of wine with your friends.”
Danny looked up from his book. “You’re home early. How was group therapy?”
Jessica splayed her arms out and squinted at the ceiling. “Very funny. It was fine. It started to sleet, so I left before it got too icy. Good book, but we didn’t really talk about it much.”
“That sounds normal.”
“Yeah, but I felt kind of like I wasn’t there tonight.” Jessica reconsidered. “No, I felt like I was there but that I was there just to watch.”
Danny marked his page and set his book on the bed next to him.
“And when I’m just watching, it seems... really... petty? Small? Self-indulgent? I don’t know. Something. A bunch of women griping and gossiping and enjoying. I don’t know. I just think how ridiculous we would seem to outsiders, especially someone who has lived a truly challenging life. I didn’t even bring up what’s been going on with my asylum case, or lack thereof. I couldn’t bear the thought of complaining about getting fired from a volunteer gig, again, and them possibly saying it was probably for the best.” She closed her eyes, covering her face with her hands.
“A person doesn’t have to live a challenging life to have value, Jess.”
“I know. But it felt so meaningless.”
“Meaningful relationships can grow from small conversations.”
Jessica whacked him with her pillow. “You sound like those inspirational quotes that get passed around on Facebook. I hate those!” She plopped back down on the comforter. “You’re right, though. And I’m being a little bitchy about it because I’m usually part of all of that, and I will be again. It’s just a weird time right now. I didn’t feel like I quite fit in tonight.”
“I have good news.” The bed creaked as Danny leaned back against the headboard.
Jessica peeked between her fingers.
“I contacted Fayiz, and he sent me a couple of photos of Mohammed. He asked me to see if I could find his cousin-in-law.”
Jessica pulled her hands from her face. She got his implication. Fayiz had asked Danny to do something for him. Jessica wouldn’t be in violation of Amina’s request for her not to help with the case.
“I can’t promise anything, though. We don’t even know if he’s alive.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The sandpaper was worn down to bare, so Jessica folded it over to the unused side and sanded away the rest of the water damage on the windowsill. She wiped up the sawdust, admiring the exposed woodgrain. Old windows had old leaks and needed a little TLC every now and then. So did her mind, and this process, these motions, this focus somehow did the trick.
“Mom.” Conor’s footsteps were soft on the parlor rug behind Jessica. “I think you should go check on Cricket.”
“Okay... Is there anything I should know?”
“Just—I don’t know. Just go check on her.”
Jessica wiped her dusty hands on her thighs and stood, her knees cracking in protest. She would apply the wood stain later.
It seemed odd that Conor would be openly worried about one of his kitchen-table sparring partners, but he had been on his best behavior since the other night, especially after he’d learned he wasn’t being grounded.
Jessica made her way up to Cricket’s room and knocked softly on the door. “Crick? Can I come in?” The indistinguishable mumble sounded close enough to “yes” for Jessica to open the door.
Cloud-filtered sunlight filled the room, which had nothing out of place other than a quilted bundle on top of the bed. The quilt was bathed in stained-glass watercolors and quivering from silent sobs.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
Cricket pushed her phone out from under the quilt. Jessica read the social media post in the middle of the screen.
“Guess what ladies your dreams have come true and i am a free man stay calm theres enough too go around.” It was posted by ach14. Who’s ach14?
“Who is this grammatically challenged guy?”
The quilted mound progressed from the light quiver to an increasing pulse of audible sobs. “He didn’t even tell me to my face! I’m so embarrassed. Everybody saw this.”
Ah. Aaron Herndon, number fourteen on the lacrosse team. When he’d picked up Cricket the day after Christmas, Jessica had wondered if that confident smirk on his face leaned a little too close to Eddie Haskell, but she had been too preoccupied to make further inquiries. Little prick broke up with my daughter via social media. “I’m so sorry, honey. I do have to say, though, that he’s the one wh
o looks bad. I mean, the grammar alone—”
“Mom! Oh my God! You don’t understand!”
Jessica sat on the edge of the bed and placed her hand on top of the mound. “I do, Crick. I was a teenager once. Nothing has changed. I had huge crushes and got crushed and had my share of embarrassing moments.”
Cricket’s head burst out from under the quilt. Puffy red flesh ringed her bloodshot eyes. “Things have changed. It’s not the olden days. This is On. The. Internet. Everybody saw it. Arrrrr!” She threw the quilt back over her head. But she had stopped crying, and anger was better than despair.
Jessica pulled up her leg and folded it under herself to get comfortable. “I was a sophomore and made the varsity basketball team. I was the only sophomore and got to hang out with the juniors and seniors on the team. I thought I was the shit. I was in love with this guy, Marcus Danneberg. He was a god. Dark hair, high cheekbones, deep-brown eyes. He was my Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles.” She tilted her head. “You do know who Jake Ryan is, don’t you?”
The mound spoke. “Are you kidding? You and Dad made us watch all the John Hughes movies.”
“I guess we did something right. Anyway, I seemed to be fitting in with the upperclassmen, and I happened to mention after one of our first practices that I had a crush on Marcus.”
Jessica must have paused to lament the error of that decision for too long, because Cricket prompted her with an elbow to her thigh. “And?”
“Well, I didn’t know if he even knew I existed. But the girls were so supportive. ‘I definitely think you have a chance!’ ‘You guys would make such a cute couple!’ And so on. Little did I know that Melissa Hagge, the team captain’s best friend, had her eye on Marcus. And she was a senior. And a cheerleader. And a little slutty. Not that there’s a connection, of course.
“I was really excited for the first boys’ basketball game. It was the first time that my parents were going to let me go out to the pizza place after the game. I had picked out this great—oh, I’m not even going to describe that outfit because you never approve of my clothing suggestions, but I can say that I made my hair extra big that night.”
Jessica could recall that night with uncommon clarity. It had been a visceral thrill to walk into a high school gym buzzing with teenage hormones and the excitement of a big game. The squeak of the shoes on the court, the enveloping stuffiness of the shared air, the pulsating sounds from a not-terrible high school band added up to pure adrenaline.
A head emerged from the mound. “I’ve seen pictures, Mom. I know you were a complete nerd.”
“I was not a nerd! That is how we looked back then. I was perfectly fashionable.”
“Mom. Just having the words ‘I was perfectly fashionable’ come out of your mouth tells me that you were the nerdy girl in the John Hughes movie.”
Jessica chose to ignore the insult. “They announced the starting players, and the crowd went crazy when each of them ran out onto the court. The cheerleaders had a cheer for each of the guys, holding up signs with their names on them. Marcus was last. When he ran out, the cheerleaders held up his sign. Apparently, Marcus did know I existed because he looked over at me, right at me. Then he and the other guys started laughing. The cheerleaders turned around with the sign. ‘Jessie loves Marcus,’ with a giant heart and a crude drawing of a pimply face and big hair.” In that moment, in that gym, the fear that she would always be the girl in the poster had engulfed her. Jessica felt sorry for that young girl now, the one who had believed she could be defined by someone else’s crude image of her.
Cricket had rolled over and was peeking out from under the quilt. Her lower lip protruded, and her eyes dripped with pity. “That sucks.” Then, she added, “I didn’t know they called you Jessie.”
“I left it in Iowa when I went to law school.”
“Yeah, I like ‘Jessica’ better. It sounds more adult.”
Jessica rubbed Cricket’s back. The muscle memory from soothing Crick as a crying baby filled Jessica with a warmth she wished she could capture and pack away in her trunk. Cricket’s stuttering, postcry breathing had eased. In and out. In and out. Jessica found herself falling in with the soothing rhythm. She pulled up her other leg and stretched out along the edge of the bed.
“So what happened with you and Marcus?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what happened? After the game?”
“Nothing. I never spoke with him.”
Cricket’s face fell. “I thought maybe he felt bad they did that, and he, like, asked you out after the game when he saw you at the pizza place, and you ended up sitting on top of a table eating a pizza together.”
“Honey, life is not a John Hughes movie.” Jessica twisted a lock of Cricket’s curls around her finger. “The drawing on the cheerleaders’ poster wasn’t entirely inaccurate, and I certainly couldn’t compete with a blond cheerleader with a C cup. And I didn’t go to the pizza place that night, anyway. It was hard enough to go to school the following Monday. I kept my head down. There were a few snide comments, but by the end of the week, something else had grabbed their attention, and life went on. Lesson learned.”
“Right. Don’t tell anyone who you have a crush on.”
Jessica released the curl, and it restored itself to its original form. “No. That’s not the lesson. I learned that bad things happen and I could survive them. I know that was a very minor bad thing, but it seemed like the end of the world at the time.”
The two lay there silently, breathing in unison. As Jessica closed her eyes, the concept of time evaporated. Today didn’t exist. It was the day Cricket was born, and she was lying in the hospital bed. It was a night when Cricket was in third grade, and they were snuggling with each other under the covers while the rest of the house had the flu. It was someday that hadn’t yet happened, but it would be warm and loving and forever.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The phone buzzed, and Jessica checked it when she stopped at the light. It was a group text to her and Conor from Danny: Found him
Jessica typed back, ignoring the green light and the honking from the car behind her. U sure?
Danny: 90.3%
Conor: Where?
Danny: Will get u info when home
It didn’t take long for Jessica to get home and unload the groceries, moving from the laundry room to the kitchen to the office, trying to keep busy. She picked up the phone three times to call Amina but stopped herself from dialing, wanting to have more certainty first.
If she were in Amina’s place, Jessica would want to know, despite that missing 9.7 percent, but she held back. Amina had been clear that she didn’t want Jessica involved anymore, and Amina didn’t even know about Danny’s search for Mohammed. Plus, Danny hadn’t mentioned anything about where Mohammed might be or if he had any indication that Mohammed was alive. Jessica wouldn’t further jeopardize her relationship with Amina without more information.
When Danny finally walked through the door, Jessica beat even the dog to greet him. Conor followed close behind.
With three expectant faces before him, Danny came through for Gracie first, giving her a good scratch behind the ears. Then he tilted his head toward his office. “Let’s go in here.”
Conor took a deep breath and clenched his teeth against apparent nerves. Jessica grabbed his arm to steady both of them as they walked through the parlor.
“I know I’ve explained the software to you,” Danny said. “Most of it is nothing special, just the same as the facial recognition that gets used online, by police departments, and so on. But we aren’t trying to match up against social media postings or criminal records or other defined collections. In order to get the largest reach, we scrape the Internet of billions of images. For most companies, this would be too much data and would trip up the system. But we aren’t most companies. The same code we use to handle huge encryption and decryption events, we’ve refactored to manage huge data stores in a fraction of the time and without the
risk of server overload. And Damien’s team has improved our biometrics algorithms to reduce false positives better than any technology out there. That makes a big difference when you’re searching billions of images. Got that?”
Surely he didn’t think his wife and son “got that.”
But Conor bobbed his head vigorously. “Yes. So cool, Dad.”
Danny raised his eyebrows at Jessica, seeking confirmation.
“Uh, no. Can you give me the dummies’ version?”
“We put in Fayiz’s pictures of Mohammed, and we got a match.”
“A 90 percent match, you said in your text.”
“A 90.3 percent match,” he corrected. “But that’s the programming talking. We need to get eyeballs on it. I haven’t had a chance to review any of this. Damien did the tech monitoring and passed this all off to me when I left the office.” Danny typed at lightning speed as he spoke. Screen after screen popped on and off the monitor as he bypassed the security features to access the program.
A familiar round face appeared on the screen. It was a picture of a smiling Mohammed. And next to it was a photo of another black-haired man with heavy eyebrows, but the man in that picture had cheekbones seemingly carved by sand instead of the fuller face in the first photo. This second man stood in the back of a delivery truck distinguished by a dirty tarp in place of a metal door. He was lifting a shrink-wrapped case of plastic water bottles. A crowd of people with outstretched arms were assembled in a kind of distorted mosh pit behind the truck.
“Is that him?” Conor leaned in closer to the screen, placing his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Can you enlarge it?”
“Sure. This is the match.” He took a moment, staring intently at the screen, as though he were trying to capture that remaining 9.7 percent. “It’s really a clear photo. You can see most of his face, his eyes, ears, the shape of his jaw. And we even get enough for skin-texture analysis.” Danny started typing again.
Unbroken Threads Page 27
