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EPILOGUE
Four Months Later
EVA
Today isthe day I testify at Hana’s trial. We’re standing in the shade of a few birches to the side of the courthouse—a neatly renovated mansion just outside the city center. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and I’d much rather be listening to it all in our backyard in the country while playing with Sofia.
Yesterday she lifted her head up for the first time and gave me the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. And I’m sorry I have to be here, missing more smiles.
Any moment now, they will bring Hana in. It’s the first time I’ll face her since that night and my hands are as clammy as they were on the night I sat across from her getting ready for our TV interview. We’re surrounded by journalists and camera crews.
But Mark is with me this time, and that makes it easier.
This trial is just a formality. She confessed to her part in all thirteen murders, at first claiming she was the instigator and Anica just her pawn. She did so in a final bid to protect Anica, which she’d been doing for most of their lives. A part of me still feels pity for them. They love each other very much.
Anica was broken even before Hana and she met. She’d been severely abused by her mother and step-father and didn’t fare much better after she was put into foster care at ten years old. She only ever had Hana looking out for her, and I understand Hana’s rageful attitude towards the mental health system in this country. It had failed Anica completely.
She was deemed unfit to stand trial, which came as no big surprise to me. She will be spending the rest of her life in a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane.
She also confessed. On hours and hours of tapes, going over every detail of the murders and her reasons behind them.
She truly believes she was setting the victims free. Believes it with all her heart and mind.
They suffered. They could not get better despite years and years of therapy. There was nothing but sadness ahead of them. And if they killed themselves, they would not get to heaven. She helped them. She sent them to heaven, which she is certain is just as beautiful and peaceful a place as Brother Cecil told her it was.
She would prowl the cemeteries each November 1st, looking for the saddest, most desolate souls visiting their loved ones’ graves. And then she would stalk them to make sure they were ready to leave this world and enter heaven. Her exact words.
Hana was always by her side. And when Anica decided it was time, she and Hana would approach the victim and Hana would hold them still, while Anica explained the gift she was giving them right before she plunged the knife into their hearts.
The letter was composed by Anica as a way to draw me closer to her, so she could abduct me more easily. Hana was apparently against the plan to steal my baby and I believe that, but she still went along and showed me the letter. And Anica coming forward as a witness and implicating the two psychiatrists was part of their plan on how to remain undetected so they could continue doing what they were doing. At that point, Hana knew who the main suspects were via her sources at NPB.
A dark blue police van rolls up all the way to the courthouse door, and two officers in full gear come round and open the back. Hana’s eyes zero in on me the second the van doors open. Camera flashes go off all around us, but she just keeps her hateful eyes locked on mine as they lead her into the courthouse.
“How the tables have turned on her,” Dino croaks beside me. “You’re vindicated now, and she’s in chains.”
The reporters gathered here waiting for Hana’s arrival said the same thing to me but went a step further and asked if I was happy about that.
I’m not. Hana was my friend once upon a time, and this thing she’s guilty of twists all that into a dark mess in my mind. A mess I don’t want to touch now that there’s so much joy in my heart.
“She’s getting what she deserves,” I say. “They all do, in the end. It doesn’t bring me pleasure.”
What does give me pleasure is the memory of learning Dino survived the attack after I spent all that day fearing he died while helping me chase Hana down. It gives me pleasure knowing that Anica is getting the help she needs, and I hope Hana does too.
But especially the memory of my daughter’s smile as she managed to hold her head up on her own for the first time. And Mark’s arm around my shoulders, which he placed there as soon as Hana appeared.
My family. That’s all that matters.
And I can’t wait to go leave all this behind and go home.
* * *
THE END
