Page 78 of Broken Country

“She was crying so much I couldn’t understand her. But she kept saying, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy’… so I knew. She said there had been an accident at the farm. And Jimmy had been wounded.”

“Those were her words? There had been an accident?”

“Yes.”

“Were you surprised when you realized it was a shotgun accident?”

“Not really. Beth used to worry about the guns left lying around but that was when Bobby was alive. I was used to it.”

“When you heard Frank Johnson had been arrested for murder, what did you think then?”

“It was absurd. The most far-fetched thing I’d ever heard. There isn’t a person in the world who loved Jimmy more than Frank, not even me.”

Finally, Nina turns to look at Frank. They gaze at one another for the first time in eight months, a gaze that feels as if it goes on and on, a ribbon of raw emotion flowing back and forth from the witness stand to the dock.

“Do you believe Frank Johnson intentionally shot your husband, Mrs. Johnson?”

Nina lifts her head. “I know he didn’t. There is no way that would ever have happened.”

When the phone in Eleanor’s flat rings dead-on seven, as arranged, I snatch up the receiver on the first ring.

“Waiting by the phone, were you?” Frank is laughing.

“Frank—” I’m crying, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t.

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

“I miss you.” I gasp out the words.

“Same.”

“I love you.”

“Same. You know I do.”

There’s so much I want to say to him:Are you OK? What if we don’t get the result we want? How will I manage? How will you?But I know it’s not what he needs from me tonight. We are expecting a verdict tomorrow, both of us need to stay strong.

We have only a few minutes for the call, the seconds are ticking by in silence. But it’s a silence filled with us.

“Nina,” he says, eventually.

“I know. So good of her.”

“To see her, though.”

“Incredible. She was so strong.”

“He’d—be so proud of her.”

“He would. He really would. And of you.”

“Don’t.”

“He would be, though.”

I listen to Frank trying to catch his breath and wonder how many men in prison cry when they phone their loved ones. Most of them, probably.

“Frank—”

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