Chapter Two

OLIVIA

The lawyer's office smelled like old carpet and burnt coffee, and the woman behind the desk, a small sharp faced attorney named Patricia Alvarez who'd handled the original case with the DA's office and now consulted privately for us, didn't waste time on pleasantries.

"So here's where we are," Patricia said, sliding a folder across the desk that I didn't open. "The appeal isn't challenging the conviction outright. It's more surgical than that. His new attorney, guy named Roland Fitch, he's arguing that two pieces of physical evidence from the summer house were mishandled during collection, and that your statement, specifically the parts describing what happened before Ethan arrived, can't be considered fully reliable because you were unconscious or semiconscious for stretches of that time."

"I was awake enough to remember him telling me he was taking me somewhere until I gave birth," I said. "I remember that part just fine."

"I believe you. The court might too. But Fitch doesn't need the whole case to fall apart, he just needs enough doubt introduced that the judge grants a new trial on specific counts. If that happens, the sentence doesn't automatically get thrown out, but Marcus becomes eligible for bail pending the retrial, since technically he'd be back to presumed innocent on those specific charges until they're reheard."

Ethan, sitting next to me with his elbows on his knees, said, "Bail."

"It's not guaranteed. But it's possible. Judges don't love the idea of releasing a man convicted of murder and kidnapping, but if the original conviction gets vacated on procedural grounds, even partially, his lawyer's going to push hard for it, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a real chance."

"He killed two people," I said. "He kidnapped me. There's no version of this where that gets treated as a technicality."

"I'm not saying it's fair," Patricia said. "I'm saying the system doesn't always care about fair, it cares about procedure, and Fitch found a gap in the procedure. Now, I want to be clear, this is early. There's a hearing scheduled in three weeks just to determine if the appeal even gets full consideration. A lot of appeals die right there. I've seen dozens of them filed with exactly this kind of argument, and most of them go nowhere, because most judges aren't interested in reopening a case this severe over a chain of custody argument unless the evidence in question is central to the conviction."

"Is it central," Ethan asked. "The evidence he's challenging."

Patricia hesitated just long enough that I felt my stomach drop before she even answered.

"Some of it," she said. "The physical restraints used on Olivia, and the recovered weapon, those are two of the three pieces underpinning the kidnapping and attempted murder counts. If both got excluded, the murder convictions for Emily and his father would still stand on separate evidence, that part's solid, but the kidnapping and attempted murder charges would be a lot shakier without them."

"So he could still be found guilty of killing two people and walk on hurting me," I said.

"That's the worst case scenario, and it's not the likely one. I want to be honest with you both without being alarmist. This is a long process. Even if the hearing goes his way in three weeks, that's not a trial, that's just a decision on whether to hold one. And even if he gets bail during that process, courts typically impose conditions, ankle monitor, no contact orders, travel restrictions. He wouldn't just walk out and show up at your door."

"He showed up at a bar in London three years ago without anyone telling me he was coming," I said. "Conditions didn't stop him from finding me then."

Patricia didn't have an answer for that one, and the silence sat there for a second before Ethan spoke.

"What do we do in the meantime."

"You live your life," Patricia said. "I know that sounds useless, but it's the actual advice. Don't engage with his lawyer's office if they reach out. Don't comment publicly if it hits the press, which it might once the hearing date gets closer. I'll be at every step of this, and I'll call you both the second anything changes. But right now there's genuinely nothing to do except wait for the hearing."

We didn't say much on the drive home. Ethan kept one hand on the wheel and the other resting on my knee, and every few minutes his thumb would move in small circles like he was trying to remind both of us he was still there.

"You heard what she said," he said eventually. "Most of these die at the first hearing."

"You keep saying that like repeating it enough times will make it true."

"I'm trying to believe it too, Liv. I'm not just saying it for your benefit."

"I know." I looked out the window at the traffic crawling past us. "I just keep thinking about how calm he was that day. In the visitation room. He didn't look like a man who'd given up."

"He was locked in a room with guards outside the door. There wasn't much else for him to do but look calm."

"He told me he was coming for her. For Grace."

"I remember. You told me."

"What if this is what he meant. Not breaking out. Just this. Finding a way back through the actual system instead of around it."

Ethan didn't answer right away, and when he did, his voice had gone quieter than before.

"Then we deal with it through the system too. We're not the same people we were three years ago. I've got better lawyers, better security, and I'm not going to sit in some office pretending nothing's wrong while he plans something. If this hearing goes badly, I'm already going to have people watching every angle before he's even out of a cell."

"That's not the same as him not getting out at all."

"No. It's not. I can't promise you that part. I wish I could."

We picked Grace up from daycare on the way home, and she'd apparently spent the afternoon finger painting, because there was a streak of blue across her cheek that the staff had only half wiped off, and she held her arms up the second she saw us like she'd been waiting all day specifically for this moment. Ethan took her, and she immediately grabbed his tie and put the end of it directly in her mouth.

"That's silk," he said, not making any effort to stop her. "Very expensive tie, being consumed by a nine month old."

"She has taste," I said.

"She has teeth. That's different from taste."

At home that night, after Grace was down and the apartment had gone quiet, I sat on the edge of the bed and scrolled through nothing in particular on my phone, mostly to keep my hands busy. Ethan came out of the bathroom already in the t shirt he slept in, and he sat down next to me without saying anything for a minute.

"I keep thinking about something," he said finally.

"What."

"Grace's checkup is next week. The one year one. I want to be there for it. I've missed a couple of the smaller ones because of work, and I don't want to miss this one."

"You don't have to convince me. Come."

"I know I don't have to convince you. I'm telling you I want to."

I set my phone down and looked at him. "You've been weird about the appointments lately. The last one too, you asked the pediatrician like six questions about growth percentiles that you'd never asked before."

"I like knowing she's healthy. Is that weird."

"It's not weird, it's just new. You used to just show up and hold her while the doctor talked and let me handle the actual conversation."

"Maybe I want to be more involved in the actual conversation now."

I studied him for a second, because something in the way he said it didn't sit quite right, like there was a version of the sentence underneath the one he'd actually said, but I was tired, and the day had already handed me enough to sit with, so I let it go.

"Fine," I said. "You're coming. You can ask all six questions again if you want."

"I might ask seven this time."

"Ambitious."

He almost smiled at that, the real kind, the one that made the tiredness in his face drop away for a second, and he leaned over and kissed my temple before turning off the lamp on his side of the bed.

I lay there for a long time after his breathing evened out, staring at the ceiling and running Patricia's words back through my head. Procedural grounds. Chain of custody. Bail pending retrial. None of it sounded like the language of something that could actually reach into my apartment and take my daughter, and yet none of it sounded far enough away either.

Somewhere in the building, a door closed down the hall, and I flinched at the sound before I could stop myself, my whole body going tight for a second before I recognized it as nothing, just a neighbor coming home late, just an ordinary sound in an ordinary building.

I told myself that three weeks was a long time. I told myself Patricia had seen dozens of appeals like this one collapse at the first hearing. I told myself Ethan was right, that we weren't the same people we'd been three years ago, that we had better lawyers now and better locks on the doors and people who would notice if something moved wrong in the dark.

But somewhere underneath all of that, in the same place where I'd kept the memory of Marcus screaming down that prison hallway for over a year now, a small cold voice reminded me that the last time I'd told myself I was safe, I'd been standing in an airport in London with a plane ticket in my hand, and it hadn't mattered at all.

***