The Furthest City Light Read Free Page A

pretty bad before we could have stopped it.”
    After the guard left, I examined Emily’s eye and said, “So now you’re Superwoman?”
    Emily smiled at me. “Is there only room for one in this relationship?” She had pulled her thick blond hair into a youthful ponytail. Barbie goes to jail and gets a black eye.
    I sighed audibly. “Yes, but not because I’m selfish. You’re in jail facing first-degree murder charges. I need you to keep a low profile and keep yourself safe.”
    “No one’s safe.”
    “Okay, you’re right, but I’d prefer you don’t get a reputation as a fighter. If we’re going to rely on self-defense, I want the jury to believe you’d never fought back before, that you were too afraid.”
    Emily’s face grew serious. “That’s absolutely true. But now that I’ve done it, I’m not afraid to do it again. Now, I wish I’d resisted Hal from the very beginning. He either would have killed me right away or he would have respected me.”
    “Which do you think?” I asked, pulling out my legal pad.
    “Oh, he would have killed me. He used to be a sheriff in Weld County. Did you know that?”
    “I found out yesterday.”
    Emily nodded. “Hal was eleven years older than me. He started working for the sheriff’s department right after graduating from college. It was his boyhood dream. When I met him, he’d been a sheriff for fifteen years and still loved it. He was tall and lean and incredibly self-confident. We’d been married for only six months when a teenage boy shot him in the knee. He had to go on disability and that’s when he started drinking.”
    “I see.” While I wrote down what she’d told me, I asked, “Did he ever hit you before that?”
    She hesitated. “Just once, when I asked if he’d like to have children. For some reason, that upset him. Later, after crying and apologizing, he said he wanted it to be just the two of us. I never brought it up again. It was one thing to risk my own safety, but I would have never risked anyone else’s.” She rubbed her injured eye. “Oh dear, now I have a headache. And I’m feeling so ashamed. Not about Alicia, but about my relationship with Hal. I think I might need to go lie down. Could you possibly come back later?”
    “There’s a lot more questions I need to ask you.”
    “I miss him,” she confessed. “I’m sorry I killed him. I don’t wish we were still married—oh, yes I do—I just wish we were happily married.”
    “Makes perfect sense.”
    She shook her head. “I just want to plead guilty and get this over with.” She closed her eyes then and sat very still. She was gone for only a minute or two, but her absence was palpable; clearly she’d been practicing this for a long time. The art of vanishing. I watched and waited. According to the police reports, she was thirty-six, only a year older than me, but the skin on her face was prematurely lined and drawn, living proof that a decade of being battered by your loved one isn’t good for your complexion. Eventually, she opened her eyes.
    “Hey, you promised not to give up,” I reminded her.
    “Did I?” She sighed, sat up a little straighter. “Besides Frost and Eliot, I’ve always loved Emily Dickinson’s poetry. I was named after her, you know. She was such a brave young woman. Very tender, but saw things clearly. She had a weak constitution and died young. I think I must be like her.”
    Now it was my turn to shake my head. “I don’t think so. You’re a fighter. You told me, you’re Superwoman.”
    She laughed, which made her look ten years younger. “Why does that appeal to us?”
    “That’s easy. Nobody likes to feel helpless. It’s a sickening feeling.”
    “You want to know what’s worse?” she asked.
    “What?”
    “When you get used to it.”
    ***
     
    The preliminary hearing was set for the end of November. During the five and a half weeks leading up to the hearing, I probably visited Emily about ten times. If I had to go to the jail