Beth had been too nervous to really look at him during the arraignment, but now she did, peeking through the seams of her lids. Willie Cork wasn’t much older than her public defender, but he already had threads of silver at the temples of his black hair. He probably dyed them that way, just to look the part.

“Mississippi has a long history of violence against people who’ve been silenced,” he said.

Mandy laughed. “Willie, surely even you aren’t dumb enough to try to play the race card on a Black woman.”

“Unborn children are already part of the fabric of legal documents. Why, my granddaddy made sure I had a trust before I was even a glimmer in my daddy’s eye.”

“You know there’s a world of difference between the legal rights of an unborn child and the constitutional rights of a living human being,” Mandy whispered, heatedly. “The Constitution may protect liberty and privacy interests, but the Supreme Court has determined that those protections don’t take effect until birth, and that prior to birth, a fetus is not a person. States may give a fetus legal rights, but that doesn’t make it a person.”

Beth’s head was spinning. These were a lot of words, and most of them she didn’t really understand. What she didn’t get was why, if this was all about a fetus, she was the one who was handcuffed. She stifled the hysterical laugh bubbling: after all she had gone through to not be responsible for a baby, it turned out she still was.

“I’m merely elaborating on a time-honored legal tradition of allowing those who don’t have a voice to have one in court. You see it every day, when a guardian ad litem is appointed to speak for children, or people with disabilities. We have laws to protect the vulnerable in this country who can’t protect themselves. Like, for example, your client’s baby.”

“My client’s fetus,” Mandy clarified, “which relied on its host to survive.”

“And if that host does something to cause harm, there should be consequences. If she had been attacked by someone when she was pregnant and lost the baby, wouldn’t you want her attacker pursued? You know if that was the case, you’d be fighting as hard as I am for justice. We’re not going to exclude the perpetrator just because her womb happens to house the child.”

“What about the mother’s rights?” asked Mandy.

“Can’t have it both ways, darlin’,” Willie Cork said. “You don’t get to call her a mother if you aren’t willing to call what’s inside her a baby.”

They were not even whispering anymore, and both lawyers had their backs turned toward Beth. It was as if they had forgotten she was the root of this argument.

It wouldn’t have been the first time.

The reason she was here, now, was that everyone else seemed to have the right to make decisions about her—except Beth herself. She was so damn tired of being a bystander in her own life.

“You don’t have a case,” Mandy challenged.

“Don’t I, though?” the prosecutor slipped his phone from his pocket, punched the screen a couple of times, and started to read aloud. “Mississippi code annotated 97-3-19: The killing of a human being without the authority of law by any means or in any manner shall be murder in the following cases: Subsection A—when done with deliberate design to effect the death of the person killed … or Subsection D—when done with deliberate design to effect the death of an unborn child. And of course, there’s precedent.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Purvi Patel,” Willie Cork began. “Twenty sixteen. She took the same pills your client did to terminate her pregnancy, at twenty-four weeks. Got them from a Hong Kong online pharmacy. When the baby died after birth, she was charged with a Class A felony. She was convicted and sentenced to twenty years for feticide and child neglect.”

“The evidence wasn’t clear in the Patel case that the baby was born alive,” Mandy argued. “And the conviction was overturned.”

“Bei Bei Shuai drank rat poison to commit suicide when she was thirty-three weeks pregnant. Her baby died, but she didn’t, and she was charged with murder and attempted feticide and sentenced to thirty years,” the prosecutor replied.

“And the charges against her were dropped after she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and spent a year in custody.” Mandy folded her arms. “Every case you’ve cited has been thrown out or dismissed.”

“Regina McKnight,” the prosecutor said. “Successfully prosecuted in South Carolina for homicide following a stillbirth caused by prenatal ingestion of crack cocaine. She got a twelve-year sentence.”

“Are you kidding? McKnight wasn’t even trying to have an abortion,” Mandy argued.

“You’re not making your point here, darlin’. You’re making mine. If those women were charged with murder and intent wasn’t even involved, imagine how easy it’s gonna be to lock up your girl.”

The door swung open, and a new cop entered. “You will not leave this room,” Willie Cork ordered. “Not even if the building is on fire around you. And you,” he said to Mandy, “well, good luck, Counselor.”

Mandy faced him. “As long as Roe v. Wade stands, my client had every right to terminate her pregnancy.”

“Yes,” the prosecutor agreed. “But in Mississippi, she didn’t have the right to do it by herself. That, my dear, is murder.”

Murder. Beth flinched, and her handcuff scraped the rail. Both attorneys whirled around at the same moment, realizing she was awake.

“I—I’m sorry,” Beth stammered.

“Little late for that, isn’t it?” Willie Cork said, and he sailed out the door.

—

GEORGE GODDARD’S VOICE CRACKLED THROUGH Hugh’s phone. “I believe,” he said, “that I have something of yours.”

He knows, Hugh thought. He knows about Wren.

Hugh shivered, even though it had to be ninety degrees outside. He flicked his eyes over the small group huddled around his command center and nodded. Quandt slipped on a pair of headphones to listen in. “George,” Hugh said evenly, not taking the bait. “I heard a shot. What happened? Are you hurt?”

Remind the hostage taker you’re on his side.

“Those bitches tried to shoot me.”

Hugh glanced at the SWAT commander. “So you weren’t the one who fired the gun?”

“I had to. They stabbed me.”

Hugh closed his eyes. “Do you need medical help?” he asked, although he really didn’t give a fuck if George bled to death.

“I’ll live.”

Quandt raised one brow.

“What about … everyone else? Did someone get hurt?”

“The old lady,” George said.

“Does she need medical attention?”

There was a flicker of silence. “Not anymore,” George said.

Hugh thought about Bex, about all that blood. “Anyone else, George?”

“I didn’t shoot your daughter, if that’s what you’re asking,” George said. “Now I know why you didn’t send in the SWAT team.”

“No!” Hugh said quickly. “Look. I didn’t know she was in there when you and I started talking.”

Find a bridge between you.

“She never even told me she was going to the clinic,” Hugh added. “You know what that’s like.”

Hugh held his breath. He hated talking this way about Wren. No, he hadn’t known she was going to the clinic. Yes, he hated himself for the fact that she had asked Bex to take her, and not him. But he didn’t blame Wren for not feeling comfortable. He blamed his own parenting, for not making it clear that no question, no request, nothing was off-limits.

How many parents had he sat with in their own living rooms, while the medical examiner’s team removed the body of their teenage child behind them, raw with the marks of a noose or the cuts of a razor? I didn’t know, they would say, dazed. She never told me.

Hugh never said it out loud, but sometimes thought: Well, did you ask?

And he had. He would poke his head into Wren’s room and say, Anyone picking on you at school? Anything you want to talk about?

She would look up from her homework. You mean other than the pipe bomb I’m building in my closet? Then she would grin. No suicidal thoughts, Dad. All clear.

But there were a hundred mines a teenager could step on daily. One of them had slipped through his defense.

Suddenly everything in Hugh went still. Yes, George had a vital piece of information now—that one of his hostages was related to the negotiator. He thought it gave him an advantage. But what if Hugh could use the knowledge of that information to tip the scales in his own favor?

“Listen,” Hugh said. “Both our kids snuck around behind our backs. You couldn’t stop your daughter, George. But you were able to stop mine. You saved her from making a terrible mistake.”

It was not true. Wren had not gone to the Center to get an abortion. Hugh knew this. But George didn’t.

“You know why I want this to be over, George?” Hugh said.

“You’re worried about your kid.”

“Yeah. But I also want to meet my grandchild, one day. Because of you, that’s possible.”

Silence.

“It’d be like getting a second chance. I’m a single parent, George. Just like you. I may not always have been the best father, but I tried to be. You know?”

There was a huff of response on the other end of the telephone line, which Hugh took as assent.

“But I’m also worried about what she thinks of me. I want her to be proud. I want her to think I did everything I possibly could for her.”