Free The Best Defense by Kate Wilhelm

not your lawyer, there is no guarantee that anything you say to me will remain confidential. If they put me on the stand under oath, I would be required to repeat what you tell me.”
    “I understand,” Paula said impatiently.
    “It’s what I told the police in the very beginning; they know what I said. So does that lawyer, but he didn’t believe it. I just didn’t tell them all about Jack because … I don’t know why. I didn’t think of him, of someone killing Lori. I thought I was hidden from him out there at that place.”
    She took a long breath.
    “He did it, he had to have been the one. We … he used to hit me now and then, not of ten, three or four times. I told him if he did it again I’d take Lori and leave, and for a long time, nearly a year, he didn’t touch me. So that day I had a big tip from the night before, and I went to the bank to add it to the special account we started for Lori’s school later, and all the money was gone. He took it all out. When he came home I yelled at him and he punched me.” She had started calmly enough, but now she was crying and choking on the words, which came out faster and faster.
    “I was on the floor and he picked up Lori and threw her down on the bed and he said next time he’d throw her out the window. I was scared, more than I ever was be fore. He’d never touched Lori before, only me, and I knew it would be like it was with my father. I heard the hall door slam, and as soon as I could get up from the floor I grabbed Lori. She was crying, as scared as I was, and I ran out with her.”
    She had to stop, her sobbing was too hard for the words to be coherent. Today Barbara had stuffed a big wad of tissues in her briefcase; she put some into Paula’s hand and waited, feeling sick.
    When Paula was able to speak again, she said, “A long time ago, one of the girls at work told me about a Safe House, and I went there. But I was afraid to stay because he’d find us. And they took us to the ranch and gave us some clothes. But he found out anyway.”
    “Did you tell anyone about this?” Barbara asked.
    “At the ranch? I couldn’t. I just couldn’t say anything like this in front of Lori. And I couldn’t leave her alone, she was so scared.”
    “You have to tell this to the new attorney they assign you,” Barbara said.
    “It’s very important that you tell him exactly what you told me. Will you do that?”
    Paula nodded.
    “Can I tell you about the … that day?
    It’s just what I told the police,” she added in a rush, “and the psychiatrist. I haven’t changed anything because there’s nothing to change.”
    Reluctantly, Barbara nodded.
    “Lori wasn’t feeling good,” Paula said. Her voice wavered, and she closed her eyes for a moment and drew in air.
    “She kept getting a stomachache, and she had to go to the bathroom, and she didn’t want to go out when everyone else did, and another little girl said she would stay with her. One of the women said the best thing I could do for Lori was to act like I wasn’t afraid, and that sounded right, so I went out, but I stayed at the edge of the woods waiting for her, and the other little girl came running over in a while and said Lori was sleeping. I hung around the woods for another minute or two, but finally I had to go back, to be with her if she woke up in a strange place, so she wouldn’t be alone and scared again.” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, and she was staring at her hands on the table;
    they were clenched into tight fists.
    “I went to the back door and the whole kitchen was on fire, so I ran to the front. I ran upstairs, but she wasn’t in the bed, and I looked in the bathroom and the other bedrooms and then ran down again, and then … I don’t know what happened, they said the stove or something
    exploded, and someone was holding me and the house was burning up.” The words were almost unrecognizable now.
    “I
    woke up in the hospital.”
    Barbara did not ask questions,