"Listen." He cupped his ear, leaned in to the cat on the couch. "There you go."
Nathaniel listened, but only heard a faint mew.
"Maybe you have to get closer," the priest said. "Climb up here."
For just a moment, Nathaniel hesitated, remembered. His mother had told him about going off alone with strangers. But this wasn't really a stranger, was it? He sat down in the priest's lap, and pressed his ear right against the belly of the cat. "That's a good boy."
The man shifted his legs, the way Nathaniel's father sometimes did when he was sitting on his knee and his foot fell asleep. "I could move," Nathaniel suggested.
"No, no." The priest's hand slipped down Nathaniel's back, over his bottom, to rest in his own lap.
"This is fine."
But then Nathaniel felt his shirt being untucked. Felt the long fingers of the priest, hot and damp, against his spine. Nathaniel did not know how to tell him no. His head was filled with a memory: a fly caught in the car one day when they were driving, which kept slamming itself into the windows in a desperate effort to get out. "Father?" Nathaniel whispered.
"I'm just blessing you," he replied. "A special helper deserves that. I want God to know that every time He sees you." His fingers stilled. "You do want that, don't you?"
A blessing was a good thing, and for God to keep an extra eye on him-well, it was what his mother and father would want, Nathaniel was sure of it. He turned his attention back to the lazy cat, and that was when he heard it-just a puff of breath-Esme, or maybe not Esme, sighing his name.
The second time I am called out by a correctional officer is Sunday afternoon. He takes me upstairs to the conference rooms, where inmates meet privately with their attorneys. Maybe Fisher has come to see how I am holding up. Maybe he wants to discuss tomorrow's hearing.
But to my surprise, when the door is unlocked, Patrick is waiting inside. Spread out on the conference table are six containers of take-out Chinese food. "I got everything you like," he says. "General Tso's chicken, vegetable lo mein, beef with broccoli, Lake Tung Ting shrimp, and steamed dumplings. Oh, and that crap that tastes like rubber."
"Bean curd." I lift my chin a notch, challenging him. "I thought you didn't want to talk to me."
"I don't. I want to eat with you."
"Are you sure? Think of all the things I could say while your mouth is full, before you have a chance to-"
"Nina." Patrick's blue eyes seem faded, weary. "Shut up."
But even as he scolds me, he holds out his hand. It rests on the table, extended, an offering more tantalizing than anything else before me.
I sit across from him and grab on. Immediately, Patrick squeezes, and that's my undoing. I lay my cheek on the cold, scarred table, and Patrick strokes my hair. "I rigged your fortune cookie," he confesses. "It says you'll be acquitted."
"What does yours say?"
"That you'll be acquitted." Patrick smiles. "I didn't know which one you'd pick."
My eyes drift shut as I let down my guard. "It's okay," Patrick tells me, and I believe him. I place his palm against my burning face, as if shame is something he might carry in the cup of his hand, fling someplace far away.
When you call someone on the prison pay phone, they know it. Every thirty seconds a voice gets on the line, informing the person on the other end that this transmission is taking place from the Alfred County Jail. I use the fifty cents Patrick gave me that afternoon, and make the call on my way to the shower. "Listen," I say, the minute I reach Fisher at his home number. "You wanted me to tell you what to say on Monday morning."
"Nina?" In the background I hear the laughter of a woman. The sound of glasses, or china, in a sink.
"I need to talk to you."
"You've caught us in the middle of dinner."
"Well, for God's sake, Fisher." I turn my back as a line of men straggles in from the outside courtyard.
"Why don't I just call back then when it's more convenient for you, because I'm sure I'll have another opportunity, in, oh, three or four days."
I hear the distant noise growing more faint; the click of a door. "All right. What is it?"
"Nathaniel isn't speaking. You need to get me out of here, because he's falling apart."
"He isn't speaking? Again?"
