Free Accusation by Catherine Bush Page B

coming toward her, no taillights receding up ahead, only the extending pools of her own car’s headlights. They were in the middle of a dark path, dark woods spinning past to either side. Sara felt utterly awake. And calm.
    We were in the change room at the downtown Y at the same time, the only two women there. I had been in the pool, then we were both in the showers, but I came out before her and was dressed and about to leave when she called out her wallet was missing. I helped her look for it and asked at the front desk to see if it had been turned in. She could have lost it anywhere, but she seemed convinced she’d had it when she came into the Y and taken her membership card out of it. Anyway, I left and didn’t think any more about it until I got a call from the police. She’d filed a report saying the wallet had to have been stolen from the change room and I must have taken it while she was in the shower when she’d left her locker closed but not locked. But then it became more surreal, nightmarish. There were all these store clerks who identified me as the person using her credit card later that same afternoon. They all signed statements saying I was the one they’d seen with the card, and it didn’t matter that the signature on the credit slips didn’t match the one I gave when the police asked me to sign her name. They said I was trying to cover my tracks. My lawyer found out later, after I was charged, that the clerks were shown this page of mug shots in which I was the only white and blonde woman.
    Can that happen? The thing with the mug shots? She was aware of his curiosity, which was not judgment.
    It did happen.
    What about at the trial?
    I was let off due to lack of evidence.
    The words of her lawyer, Paul Kastner, the second lawyer, came surging back, from the hallway of the court when they’d stepped out at the end of the trial, his voice raised in vexation: Sara, the court is there to get you off, not declare you innocent.
    Only a couple of years older than she was, garrulous, fingernails bitten to the quick, a terrible taste in ties, he’d been assigned to her through legal aid, after the first lawyer, Charles Martel, a distant acquaintance of her parents, suave in his charcoal suit, had advised her to plead guilty: it was a first offence, it didn’t matter what she’d done, it was expediency, she’d get off with counselling or a fine and avoid the risks of the courtroom and extended legal costs. Or her parents would avoid the costs. You want me to do what? she’d shouted before bolting from his office.
    People, Raymond Renaud said, shifting in the dark, think they remember things that aren’t true. And when they believe something is true, it is hard to make them believe it isn’t.
    Yes, Sara said. Touched. Intimacy, she thought, was a way of being seen by someone else, touched, a form of bearing witness. She felt a sudden, deep connection to him. That’s it exactly.
    I’m sorry, Raymond said after a moment. I have to ask. What did the person with the credit card take from the shops?
    I’ll probably never forget. A pair of lambskin gloves from the Bay, a bottle of Chanel perfume from the perfume counter, twenty cassette tapes from Archambault. A leather coat from a Danier outlet. The horrible thing is they’re not so far from things I might have bought except I’d never, ever buy albums by Sting or Madonna.
    The wind through the air vents felt cold. The blue numbers of the digital clock on the dashboard read 4:06 a.m. Sara’s fingers shifted to find a comfortable place on the steering wheel, her eyelids itchy as if grit pressed against them. It struck her that she had not told him about Juliet Levin’s part in all of this, but the opening into which she’d spoken already felt closed, and besides, it had all happened so long ago. The release she felt in telling him, freedom in the wake of it, confirmed that all of that was long ago, and had been passed through, and was now behind