Karin, meanwhile, was doing much better, thanks in part to months of therapy and to some new crucial friendships with Margot and Lotte. She still went once a week to see a woman who specialized in traumatic stress experiences, but she wasn’t crying as often lately, and she had gotten back into a rhythm at school. Her grades had gone back up. The fact that her mom was so involved in actively making sure Martijn got his comeuppance seemed important to that recovery, Grace thought.
In the wake of all this, in addition to her job at the NGO, Grace was writing a book using Pieter’s Syria photographs. The photos that had not been published because of Martijn’s intervention were only a small part of the work he had done there. It turned out there were many more important photographs on that memory stick. There were also the photographs he had taken of the 2012 battle of Damascus and the destruction of the temple there, his insider’s look at the torture hospital, and his images of ordinary life under the siege. Pieter had had his failings, but he had done quite a lot of revelatory work in Syria. Grace wasn’t glossing over the complications of his ethics; in fact, that was what made the book of particular interest to her. People weren’t perfect, and Grace had had to teach her daughter that too.
“I think we’re just about to go in,” said Lily Oppenbauers. “We’ll take a seat in there and wait till the rest of the prosecution team arrives.”
They were all rising to follow Ms. Oppenbauers when Karin saw Margot step out of the elevator down the hall. She ran toward her, and the two hugged. Grace had not expected Margot to be here for this—she didn’t have to come—but the two girls had become very tight since the dropping.
Margot still had a small crescent of a scar on her temple where Martijn had hit her, but Grace thought it might fade over time. She’d had to have ten stitches when she arrived at the hospital, but she had been in such good spirits—it was remarkable. Margot had said that the whole experience had somehow made her feel powerful, in spite of how scary it had been. Grace watched as Karin and Margot walked down the hall together arm in arm, with Margot’s parents behind them, giving Grace a vague, friendly smile.
The doors to the courtroom opened and then more people started to arrive and file inside. Grace waited before the doors, her heart swelling with gratitude that this moment had finally come. She needed to take a deep breath before she saw Martijn again.
Just before she walked into the courtroom to join everyone else, she glanced over her shoulder and saw another familiar figure walking toward her, with his calm, confident way, and his translucent blue eyes: Detective van Dijk. He didn’t need to be here today either. This wasn’t his case.
Grace mused for a moment how this terrible incident, which had exploded the family she thought she’d been building, in some ways had led her to find a new community of people who supported her and surrounded her. She was back in touch with Jenny. She had met Maaike, who had become something of an adopted grandmother figure for Karin. They had become close to all the kids from the Scout group—Dirk, Lotte, and Margot—and their parents. And even though she had often thought about leaving this country that wasn’t her home and heading back to the US to raise Karin in that familiar place, she now felt she couldn’t leave. There was too much holding her here.
“How are you feeling today, Grace?” Detective van Dijk asked her as he arrived at the door, took it from her, and motioned her inside.
She smiled. “I feel all right,” she said. “For the first time in a very long time, I feel all right.”
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About the Author
Nina Siegal is an American novelist and journalist who’s lived in Amsterdam for fifteen years. She has previously published two novels (the first a literary mystery), and she is a regular contributor to the New York Times, covering European culture. She also writes and edits for many other international publications. Born in New York City and raised in the city and on Long Island, she graduated from Cornell University with a BA in English literature and received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives with her eight-year-old daughter, Sonia, who was born and raised in Amsterdam, and their dog, Coco.
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