Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

THE PHONE ON MY NIGHTSTAND pings. I feel for it—welcome relief from my sleepless state—and bring it to my face, squinting at the bright screen. It’s not an Emergency Alert. British Columbia reserves those for the tsunami that will roll in any year now and destroy us all. But the message makes my heart thud.

CHILD GONE MISSING, the AMBER Alert reads.

Instinctively, I reach for the bassinette by my bed where my baby daughter sleeps. I find Claire’s face to trace the warm, smooth skin of her forehead. Somewhere, a desperate mother is weeping for her lost child, but my little girl is here, with me, safe. Gently, so not to wake her, I lift Claire out of the bassinette and draw her to my chest, stroking her tuft of hair—dark like mine in the pre-dawn light—and will my heart to stop pounding. She stirs for a moment, then settles, her chest rising and falling with each breath. She’s fifteen weeks old.

Jilly Truitt, criminal defence attorney. If only they could see me now. In the old days, I would be rising, tugging on sweats for my pre-work run, and rehearsing questions to skewer a prosecutor’s witness in the courtroom. But that was then, and this is now. After a few moments, I place Claire back in her bed and lay down on my side, gazing at my baby girl. I blink away the exhausted remains of a sleepless night.

Postpartum depression. That’s what Edith says I have. Wise Edith, the social worker who rescued me as an orphaned baby and shepherded me through foster homes. I didn’t argue with her, but I know it’s more than that. It’s grief. Motherhood wasn’t something I craved, nor was it something I swore off. I always thought, though, that when I took that leap, I’d have someone by my side. I’d have Mike. But a bullet changed that.

If only I hadn’t taken Vera Quentin’s case.

Last month marked the one-year anniversary of his death. I woke up that morning feeling out of sorts, out of alignment. I had a weight on my chest, a pain that I couldn’t shift. Later, I realized. My body remembered what my brain forgot. Gone a year, and yet when I close my eyes I still see Mike’s long face and beaky nose, the shift of his cool grey eyes from dark to light when he smiled at me. We met in first-year law and passed the next decade plus as best friends and occasional lovers. Mike wanted more, kids and the whole bit, but I wasn’t ready. Then when a disgruntled client put out a hit on me last year, I ran to Mike for help—and the killer got him instead of me. Mike saved my life but lost his own.

Postpartum depression. And grief.

A month after Mike died, I found out I was pregnant. I will keep this child, I told the doctor, it’s all I have left of him. I held myself together throughout the pregnancy, but when they slipped Claire into my arms, I broke down. Mike would never see his daughter, and I had to raise her alone. Tough as nails in the courtroom, I feared I would fail as a parent.

I long for Mike, for his presence, for his strength and understanding, for him to tell me that the bullet that killed him wasn’t my fault. Above all, I long for him to tell me that it will not happen again, that Claire will be safe, that she’ll live a long life. Depression, grief—labels can’t make the fear of losing what I love go away.

Go back to work, Edith tells me. That will cure me. Each week, I think I might be ready. Each Monday, I force myself to my closet. I finger the dark court suits, preserved in protective plastic for the day when I will need them again, and turn away. I have no time for keeping the people who do bad things out of jail. That’s why I lost Mike. Some day, I will be a lawyer again. But not today.

I cup Claire’s head. Somewhere, a mother has lost her child.