Free The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne

was willing to fight for, people he admired, people he despised. This moment had always been calm for him. It signaled the beginning. The beginning of his case, the beginning of the defense.
    Watching the doors close on Sebastian, Daniel felt different than he had before. He still couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about Sebastian that he connected with and he kept hearing his own childhood cries in the boy’s desperate pleas. He remembered being Sebastian’s age. He had been troubled. He had been capable of violence. What was it that saved him from this fate?
    When the doors were locked, Daniel and Charlotte could still hear Sebastian crying inside. Daniel didn’t know if the little boy was innocent or guilty. Part of him believed that Sebastian had told him the truth, another part of him was concerned about the boy’s strange interest in blood and his tantrums that seemed worthy of a younger child. But Sebastian’s innocence or guilt was inconsequential. Daniel did not judge his clients. They were all entitled to a defense and he worked as hard for those he hated as those he admired. But juveniles were always difficult. Even when they were guilty, as Tyrel had been, he wanted to keep them out of the prison system. He had seen what happened to juveniles inside—drug dependency and reoffending. The help that Daniel felt they needed was considered too expensive by politicians who used the criminal justice system to try and win political points.
    D aniel sat in his office overlooking Liverpool Street. He had the radio on low as he made notes on Sebastian’s case.
    He had placed the letter in the front pocket of his briefcase; the paper was crumpled now, from being read and reread. Now he took it out and read it again. He still had not called the hospital. He refused to believe Minnie was dead, but read the letter again as if he had missed something. It was a cruel ploy, he decided. All her phone calls over the years asking for forgiveness, and then tiring of that and just asking to see him one more time.
    Daniel wondered if the letter was another attempt to have him back in her life. She might well be sick, but trying to manipulate. He folded the letter and pushed it away from him. Just thinking about her made his stomach tight with anger.
    The office was warm; delicate rays of sunshine shot through the sash windows and illuminated dust. He picked up the telephone.
    After all the things he had said to her, she would still call every year on his birthday and sometimes at Christmas. He would avoid her calls, but then lie awake at night arguing with her in his head. It seemed that the years did nothing to calm the anger he felt toward her. The few times that they had spoken, Daniel had been clipped and distant, not allowing her to tempt him into conversation when she asked how he was enjoying work or if he had a girlfriend. He had mastered detachment long ago, but Minnie had helped him to perfect it. It was because of her that he didn’t want to let anyone in. She would talk to him about the farm and the animals, as if to remind him of home. He was only reminded of how she had let him down. Sometimes she would say again that she was sorry, and he would cut her off. He would hang up the phone. He hated her justifications even more than what she had done. She said it had been for his own good. He didn’t like to remember, and mostly he did not, but the pain of that still took his breath away.
    He had not called her for more than fifteen years.
    Not since their disagreement, when he told her that he wished she was dead.
    It hadn’t seemed enough. He remembered wanting to hurt her more.
    Nevertheless, he dialed without checking her number or struggling to recall. The phone rang and Daniel took a deep breath. He cleared his throat and leaned forward on the desk, eye on the door of his office.
    He imagined her prising herself out of the chair in the living room as her latest pound mongrel raised its