That was when it started, a feeling of unease that crept over me, the premonitory sense that something was very near and very wrong. It churned my guts and made me grateful I’d purchased two stomach-settling Cokes, not one, although until today, I hadn’t drunk a Coke for ten years.
Animals can tell where trouble is afoot. They don’t have to think it over, although Felicity would have said that they do discuss it, sending warnings in their own tongue: look out, take cover, a storm, a hawk, beware. It doesn’t always work; sometimes the threat is already upon them, but they are guided by instinct invariably, in the way humans have forgotten how to be. We have those instincts too, and experts on personal safety say that they are almost always right. Sometimes, we override those instincts. Always, when we do, it’s a bad idea. Think of every time that you have done that... every ride you took with a sketchy guy because it was just so late and nobody else was around. Every time you decided to hit the snooze button because there was plenty of time before the exam. Every time you knew full well that you hadn’t left yourself time and you ignored the weather. How did that work out? You look back on that time as a near miss, when you were lucky to pass the test, keep the job... keep your life.
That unease crawled on me as I ate the last bites of the sandwich and neatly folded the wrapping. There was a single white cloud above, the size of a continent, but white and benign. It did not portend a storm. I put one of the sweating Coke cans against my sun-basted forehead. I watched the eagles. They mated for life. They didn’t get distracted by old tales or the tail feathers of new raptors. They were one-eagle kind of birds.
My phone rang then.
It was my mother. The jury was back. It had been not quite three hours. I was, of course, just a reporter and there was no way that the verdict would wait for me. So I asked Miranda to be my eyes and ears and she promised she would. As it turned out, everything had to wait on Israel Ronson, whose car broke down and who had to wait for an associate to pick him up on the beltway, which was suddenly clogged with traffic. Sam knew better than to go far. He didn’t expect a verdict so soon, but had hunkered down with a book in a local coffee shop. His was a five-minute walk.
I would later hear that he told someone that it was a myth that a fast verdict was a guilty verdict. A jury coming back quickly often meant that the members understood everything and didn’t have any questions.
Still, I ignored the speed limit, as I had that night in Chicago with the woman in labor. I wished I had a gumball to slap on the roof of the car. Barns and cows flashed past like images in a child’s flip-book. When I was ten minutes out, my phone rang again: my mother. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Where would Felicity’s arrow fly when she left the courtroom this evening? Would she go out for celebratory drinks with her stripper sisters, then back to her luxe condominium with the blue-tiled pool? Or would she be pointed toward a thousand other women as the occupant of her own eight-by-twelve cell at Manoomin Correctional Facility in Fond du Lac?
The sun had just begun its long summer descent over Lake Mendota when everyone again assembled in the courtroom. My mother and Claire held hands. Sam held Felicity’s right hand and Angela held her left hand. I clasped my own hands together, scrutinizing my own emotions. Did I want her to go free if she had done this thing? I did. I did not. I whispered to Felicity with my mind:Promise to be good, I whispered.Promise to walk the high path.
Judge Martin addressed the jury forewoman, juror number eleven, a college track coach. “Madam, has the jury reached a verdict on which you all agree?”
“We have, Your Honor,” said the forewoman, and I knew for sure when she reached out to grab a corner of the jury box and the woman next to her steadied her briefly by supporting her elbow.
“Please give me the verdict.”
The bailiff handed the innocuous mustard-colored rectangle to the judge, who opened it.
“Miss Wild, please rise.” Felicity stood, Sam and Angela pressing in beside her. “I will now read you the verdict.” The forewoman closed her eyes. “On the first count, we, the jury, find the defendant, Felicity Claire Copeland Wild, guilty of first-degree intentional homicide as charged in the information. On the second count, we, the jury, find the defendant, Felicity Claire Copeland Wild, guilty of first-degree intentional homicide as charged in the information.” The judge removed her reading glasses. “Do you understand this verdict, Miss Wild?”
“I... do... ” Felicity stammered and then staggered against the table in front of her. Sam tried to put an arm around Felicity’s shoulders but she struggled free. “Please no!” she cried out. “No! I didn’t do this!” In a lower voice, choked with what I assumed were tears, because I could not see her face, she added, “Yourhonor, please listen. I may not be innocent, but I’m innocent of this!” Finally allowing Sam to take her elbow and hold her up, Felicity began to tremble violently, twisting her head wildly to the left and to the right. She called out, “Mom!” and “Reenie!”
Almost gently, the judge said, “Compose yourself, Miss Wild.”
Now unsteady on my own legs, I reached for the back of the bench in front of me, my notebook and pen clattering to the floor. Sam flinched at the sound. I glanced over at my mother and my aunt. Miranda and Claire held each other close, their foreheads touching.
Then another of those things happened that you never believe in a novel, from the same deck as those many phony instances in which the beleaguered heroine curls her fingernails so tightly into her palms that her hands begin to bleed. I heard a voice calling “Wait! Wait! Just wait a minute!” and it honestly took me several seconds to realize that it was me. But I wasn’t ejected from the courtroom for my disorderly outburst because it was all over. I caught a brief glimpse of Jack Melodia just as he turned away and left the courtroom through the main door. Then my mother came to my side and, with Claire trailing behind us, we walked down the stairs and out into the honeyed afternoon light, to the sidewalk where that absurdly blonde woman was saying, “This is Sally Zankow outside the Dane County courthouse, where former escort Felicity Wild has been found guilty in a swift verdict... the sensational trial of a gifted biology student who inexplicably gave up a bright future...”
I left my mother and ran into Sally on purpose, jostling her so hard that she nearly dropped her mic. I said, “Oh, I am so sorry.” But I was not.
When, several weeks later, Felicity was sentenced to two consecutive terms of not less than twenty years each, I was not there.I read the accounts and heard from Sally and others that she took it very well. She was composed. Her impassive exterior was back in place. Claire told me that she overheard Sam promise that he would come to see her right away to begin preparation for an appeal, but Felicity only thanked him and squeezed his forearm and wished him good luck before she turned away.
For the first time, I wondered if Felicity was actually mentally ill. Her composure wasn’t simply unusual; it was eerie. Facing what she had to face, anyone else would have clutched for a lifeline, for any hope at all. Did her guilt so overwhelm her? Was her sense of justice so acute?
I wrote Felicity two letters, one right after she went to prison, the other a few weeks later. This time, my letters were not returned to me. One day, I received a letter from her. It was the only one she’d ever write to me from prison.
Dearest Reenie,
Thank you for the books. Your care and friendship mean a great deal to me. You have always been there. I know how hard all this has been for you to understand. I will never forget you or how brave and good you are.
With love, Felicity
But I did not answer that letter.
I was confused.
A week went by as a question, one that had been in the water too long, washed up stinking on the shore of my consciousness. It was livid and ugly: Was Felicity ever who I had believed her to be? And if she was, had she changed so profoundly that no vestige of the girl she’d been was left?
When she first went to prison, I was in shock. I couldn’t work the whole thing out. What was most on my mind was how horrified she must be, prison being worse by orders of magnitude than the eight often-empty cells at the Dane County jail. I didn’t want her to feel abandoned. But had her crime erased my affection for her? Certainly, it would not have been the case if the murders had been accidental. But how did I feel about a cynical, pitiless plan? And what kind of person was fine with having a murderer for a pen pal?
So I stopped writing.
Then, a week later, I saw Sam’s number on my phone screen, and my heart accelerated. At last. At last! But his text was only to plead with me to write to Felicity. Felicity, Felicity, she was the one who really mattered to him. When I didn’t reply to that text, he left me a phone message, which I listened to a dozen times—not for the content but to hear his voice say my name. Felicity could not eat or sleep and was finally hospitalized again. She’d begun therapy, once a week when she was in crisis, later once a month or less often. It seemed to be helping to a degree. He thought I would want to know.
