Spilled Blood

22

Hannah buzzed Chris through the street door into the Women’s Resource Center. He waited until the door closed behind him with a solid click before he went upstairs. The steps were old and steep, worn low in the middle by decades of foot traffic, and the narrow hallway was claustrophobic. He smelled pizza from the ovens of the Italian restaurant next door. At the top of the steps, he opened another door and found himself in the small lobby of the Center. It was gloomy, lit by a few table lamps. The aluminum mini-blinds on the windows were down. There was no receptionist, just a handful of chairs on the beige shag carpet, a water dispenser with packets to make tea or coffee, and a brochure rack sitting on a square oak table. The room was warm.

He wasn’t alone. A woman in her twenties sat in a straight-backed chair, with a copy of Redbook in her lap. She had strawberry-blond hair, and her closed eyes snapped open at the sound of the door. Her eyes were a pretty shade of pale blue, but they were alert and fearful. Her entire body flinched when she saw him, like a cat alarmed by the smallest sound. He was reminded of where he was, in a place that was often the last stop on a brutal road, where it took courage even to walk through the door.

He took a seat as far away from her as he could, near the window overlooking the street. He separated two of the blinds to peer outside and noticed a round hole in the glass, large enough to poke his finger through. When he eyed the opposite wall of the lobby, he spotted a matching hole near the ceiling, where the bullet fired from the street had buried itself in the plaster.

Abortion protester. Enraged husband. Barron boy. Take your pick.

The door to the inner office opened. It was Hannah. Seeing her, the young woman in the lobby bounded to her feet and threw her arms around Hannah’s neck. Her nervous face blossomed with relief, as if she’d found a life preserver in a big ocean. Hannah hugged her back, then whispered in the woman’s ear. The visitor nodded shyly and disappeared into the open office with a final, furtive look at Chris.

Hannah gave him a smile that was unusually warm. ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Take your time.’

She closed the door, leaving him alone. He found himself daydreaming about the past, remembering Hannah. The woman in the doorway was the same woman he had met in college. Time didn’t matter; she was still the girl in the tie-dye shirt and sweat pants, who nursed abused dogs at the Humane Society, who screamed at politicians at the state fair, who drove four hours to swing sand bags at the Red River, who made love until sweat covered their bodies. He was the one who had changed, not her. In the early years, he’d been an idealist, like her. Young. Naïve. The crappy apartment in Uptown was fine. Mac and cheese was the best dinner on earth. They both worked in a South Minneapolis urban center, the lawyer and the psychologist, out to rescue their corner of the world. They laughed, they fought, they made up. They were happy.

Olivia changed everything. He held that fragile baby in his arms, and he got scared. He grew up; he got older. Barely getting by wasn’t enough anymore. Other people, other causes, didn’t matter; only that little girl mattered to him. He made a bargain with Hannah, and neither of them realized at the time that it was a devil’s bargain. She stayed home with their daughter, and he went to work. Real work. Lawyer’s work. He made money and played the game. He moved them out of Uptown and west to the exclusive lakeshore suburbs. In the early years, he thought he was building a fortress, but it was really a maze. Eventually, he lost Hannah in it.

The door opened again. She stood there, waiting for him. Behind her, the office was empty. There was a rear entrance that she used to make it easier for women to come and go in secret, and the woman in the lobby had slipped away. It was just the two of them. Hannah stared at him in silence, and he stared back. It felt to Chris as if she could read his mind and see that he had been reliving their years together, the highs and the lows. Her face had a sweet sadness. He stood up, and she came to him and quietly put her arms around his chest.

‘Thank you, Chris,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For being here. For saving her. I married a good man.’

He said nothing. It felt like the first scar over an old wound, and he didn’t want to risk breaking it open by saying the wrong thing.

They stayed in the lobby in the dim, dusty light. She sat down next to him and played nervously with the shade of an old lamp. Her hand trembled with little involuntary spasms. He saw weakness and fatigue in her pale face. Even Hannah had her limits. Fighting Mondamin. Fighting cancer. Fighting the violence that had swept Olivia up in its currents. There was a point at which you simply wanted to throw yourself into the wave and get carried away.

‘I never wanted to kill anyone before last night,’ she said. ‘If I’d had a gun, I would have shot every one of those bastards.’

He thought: I have a gun. In a few hours, it would be dark, and he would have to make a choice.

‘We’ll get them,’ he said.

‘Does it matter?’ she asked. ‘We can’t unring the bell for Olivia.’

‘No, but we can get justice.’

Hannah grimaced and sucked in her breath. Her eyes closed. Chris put a hand on her shoulder and leaned closer. ‘Are you okay?’

‘There are good days and bad days. This is a bad day.’

‘I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can—’

Hannah stopped him with a finger on his lips. The smallest touch of her skin was sensual. ‘Please don’t. Don’t say it. You’re already worried about Olivia. You don’t have to worry about me, too.’

‘I do anyway.’

‘I didn’t ask you here to take care of me.’

‘That doesn’t mean I can’t,’ he said.

Hannah offered a small smile of surrender. ‘I know. Thank you.’

‘Do you mind if I ask you something? You don’t have to tell me, but I’m curious.’

‘What is it?’

‘Glenn Magnus told me he was interested in you, and you turned him down. Why?’

‘Glenn shouldn’t have told you that,’ she replied, frowning.

‘Maybe not, but why? You obviously care for him.’

‘I wasn’t ready.’

Chris was surprised to see her look away and cover her face. In trying to be tender, he felt as if he had said the most hurtful thing imaginable. His temptation was to reach for her, but he resisted it. Instead, he got up and took a box of tissues from the coffee table and handed it to her.

‘I guess we should avoid certain topics,’ he said.

Hannah sniffled and nodded. ‘I guess.’

‘You heard about Johan and Ashlynn?’ he asked.

She nodded again.

‘You didn’t know?’ he asked. ‘Olivia never told you?’

‘She tells me very little.’

‘He was in the ghost town the night of the murder. He may have killed her.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘I know the boy, Chris. I don’t believe he would do something like that.’

‘I can’t look the other way, even though he’s Glenn’s son. There are certain realities of defending a murder charge, Hannah. Evidence pointing to someone else helps Olivia.’

She opened her mouth as if to protest, but she closed it without saying anything. She squared her shoulders, reclaiming her strength. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

‘I need to know more about Ashlynn,’ he said.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Ashlynn called Tanya Swenson from Nebraska the day before she was killed. Do you have any idea why she would do that?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Were they friends?’

‘I have no idea.’

He frowned, wondering if she was hiding things again.

‘Chris, it’s true,’ Hannah went on. ‘You have to understand, I barely knew Ashlynn. She called me two weeks ago. She was in trouble, and I helped her as best I could. That’s the only communication I had with her.’

‘There are too many missing pieces about this girl,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like the abortion.’

‘Christopher, put yourself in her shoes. She was scared and alone.’

‘I realize that, but everyone tells me she was close to her mother. Why didn’t she go to Julia?’

‘Even good girls are afraid to admit their mistakes. Particularly when they face the awful choice that Ashlynn did.’

‘She was a teenager, Hannah.’

‘Do you think she did this lightly? Do you think having a baby was a trifling inconvenience to her?’

‘I don’t know. Tell me.’

‘I saw her, Chris. That girl was in despair. She was inconsolable. The idea of terminating her pregnancy was horrifying to her. It went against every spiritual value she held.’

‘Then why do it? You said you didn’t think she’d been raped.’

‘I don’t believe she was.’

‘Did she tell you who the father was?’

‘I told you, no. I assume now it was Johan, but she didn’t say.’

‘Maybe she was seeing someone else. Johan said she broke up with him a month ago, but her phone records show that she exchanged calls with the clinic shortly before she called you. That was only a couple of weeks ago. If she just found out she was pregnant—’

Hannah held up your hands. ‘Chris, no, you’re wrong.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Ashlynn was already in her second trimester when she came to me. She was slow to realize she was pregnant. She’d been struggling with how to deal with it, but she’d made the decision to tell her parents. She was planning to have the baby. She was going through with it.’

‘So what changed?’ Chris asked.

Hannah hesitated. ‘I don’t know what difference it makes to tell the world what this poor girl was going through.’

‘I still need to know,’ he told her softly.

‘The calls from the clinic were about her ultrasound,’ Hannah said. ‘Ashlynn was obsessed with the health of the child. She told me she’d been having premonitions that she’d lose the baby. It was taking over her life. I don’t know how, but somehow she knew that something was terribly wrong.’

He thought about Ashlynn’s phone records. She hadn’t told Johan. She hadn’t told her parents. She’d gone through it all alone. It must have been excruciating.

‘What did the ultrasound show?’ he asked.

‘Anencephaly.’

Chris bowed his head. ‘Oh, no.’

‘That’s the only reason she chose the abortion, Chris. It’s not because she wanted to give up her child. She had to. Her baby was going to die.’