Beside him, Clare’s head snapped around. “No!” she cried, jumping up. “Wait a minute. Stop! You can’t do this. We never talked about this. I never said you could do this. I won’t allow it!”
“Mr. Johansen, please restrain your client,” the judge cautioned.
“Yes, Your Honor,” David said.
He turned to Clare. “You have to let her do this,” he whispered, putting his hand firmly on his client’s shoulder and pushing her back into her chair. “She wants to do this. She needs to do this. Not just for you, but for herself. So trust her. And trust me.”
“But why would you put her through this?’ Clare demanded. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“I didn’t go to her, she came to me,” David told her. “So why don’t we hear what she has to say?”
The door to the courtroom opened and Julie Durant entered, following a guard all the way down the aisle to the witness stand. The slip of a girl was wearing a blue pleated skirt and a white blouse and looked, for all the world, like she was on her way to school. She put her hand on the bible and swore to tell the truth in a voice that was almost a whisper. Everyone in the courtroom leaned forward in order to hear her.
“How old are you, Julie?” David asked.
“I’m thirteen,” the girl replied.
“Is that old enough to know the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know the difference, and I’m not going to lie. This is too important.”
“Julie, your mother didn’t know you were going to come here today,” the attorney began. “Do you know why?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “Because I asked you not to tell her.”
“Why didn’t you want me to tell her?”
“Because she wouldn’t have let me do this, and it’s important that I do it.”
At the defense table, Clare bit down hard on her lower lip to stifle a cry.
“But if it’s important that you be here, why do you think your mother would have objected?” David asked.
“Because she wants to protect me,” Julie said. “She doesn’t want me to be involved.”
“But isn’t that reasonable -- that she would want to protect you?”
Julie shrugged. “I guess so, but the thing is -- I am involved,” she said. “It’s just that she doesn’t know it.”
“How do you mean, you’re involved but your mother doesn’t know it?”
“That day -- Father’s Day, when we went to the mountains and we were coming down that steep trail, I was just turning around to tell Peter something when my mother went over the side of the mountain. I saw what happened.”
“Tell the court what happened, Julie.”
“She didn’t slip and fall by herself. I saw my father put out his foot and trip her so she would fall.”
Clare let out a little cry and her hands flew to her mouth. A collective gasp ran through the courtroom.
“Do you mean your father did it deliberately, or that he just maybe lost his balance and fell into her?”
“He didn’t lose his balance,” Julie said flatly. “I saw him stick his foot out on purpose to trip her up.”
“And you never told anyone?”
“I told Doreen. She’s our housekeeper. I told her what I saw as soon as we got home. And I told Peter, too. He’s my brother. But I didn’t tell anyone else. I was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Scared of what would happen if I told. Scared the police might come and take my dad away. Doreen said we shouldn’t say anything for the tine being, but we should keep our eyes open.”
“Why do you think she said that?”
The girl shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I think maybe she didn’t believe me.”
“Do you think she thought you were lying?”
“No, not lying,” the girl replied, “but that maybe I was just mistaken about it.”
“So what did you think?” David inquired. “That if Doreen didn’t believe you, maybe no one else would, either?”
Julie nodded. “I tried to do what Doreen said. I tried to keep my eyes open. I tried to keep my eyes on my mom. But then I went to art class, and I wasn’t there when the truck hit her.”
At the defense table, Clare was sobbing uncontrollably into her hands, and for several seconds, it was the only sound that could be heard in the courtroom. Because now she understood -- she understood Julie’s behavior after that day, and she cried because she hadn’t been able to help her daughter.
“You wouldn’t come here and say what you just said just to help your mother, would you?”
“You mean if it wasn’t true?” Julie asked.
“Yes.”
“No,” the girl replied, shaking her head. “I don’t tell lies. I know better. The thing is, lies never really help anyone. In the end, they always come out, and then it just makes things worse. That’s what Mom always says, and I know it’s true.”
“Could you have been mistaken then, as Doreen probably thought you were?” David pressed. “You had -- what -- a split second to see what happened? Is it possible you just thought you saw your father trip your mother?”
“I don’t think you mistake seeing something like that,” Julie responded. “Do you?”
“But people think they see things all the time that later turn out to be absolutely not what they actually saw at all. Couldn’t this be one of those times?”
Julie thought about that for several seconds, and then she shook her head decisively. “When you see something like that, it’s so unexpected that it’s kind of like it takes a photograph that stays in your brain. I don’t think you get it wrong. I mean -- whoever expects to see their father try to kill their mother?”
“Thank you, Julie,” David said.
***
Great, Mark Sundstrom thought to himself. Now all he had to do was go after a teenager -- and not just any teenager, but one who had already lost her father and was in real danger of losing her mother. She was
