The Final Verdict

"Ms. Davis? Are you alright?" My eyes flashed up to my lawyer, waiting and ready to finish my defense.

Her question asked for an answer I thought was obvious. No, I was not okay. I could feel his eyes boring into me from where he sat at the prosecution table and waiting for me to take one look at him. I had to focus on the glass of water sitting by my hand so I wouldn't look at him. And there was a battle going on in my brain, because I knew I shouldn’t look at him, but every part of me wanted to. He was someone I loved.

But that's the thing about our situation. I always loved his eyes the most. There weren't many windows in the courtroom, but the light streamed through the one sitting directly to my left and I knew that if I looked up, if I looked at him, it would be right in his eyes. They would light up and the olive shade of his irises would become translucent, and I would see very clearly the love he held for me. The severity of his crimes weren't something to be ignored, but something that would put him in a single place for decades, but only because I was left unharmed. Looking up now, right before the jury was to leave and make their final decision, could be the last time I ever saw into his soul. 

I closed my eyes, cinching them shut as tightly as possible. The thought of keeping them shut until he was escorted out of the room and into his own quarters rolled through my head, but I knew I couldn’t do that. “You have to appear strong, like you’re recovering,” is what my lawyer had told me in the days leading up to the trail. He spent so much time stressing how important it is for me to appeal to the jury, but how could I not? There was too much evidence against him, as well as a witness. My family thought I was dead for months before they found me, and the police found the room he had built just for me.

He had done everything just for me. Because he thought he loved me.

And that love was reciprocated. I trusted him, even now, even sitting in a tight pencil skirt I’ll only wear this one time, even as I told our story with the intention of getting him a sentence. I trusted him to keep me safe and healthy all those months. And he did. Not once did he fail me and the thought of him ending up trapped in a room like I was scared me. No one deserves to live secluded and alone like that. I was at least loved and cared for while he held me captive. He won’t have that. I won’t be there to take care of him when he needs me.

“Do you understand the reason you feel sympathy toward him?”

My therapist and I spent so much time going over Stockholm Syndrome, what it means, and how to recover from it. She wanted to make sure that I knew that none of what we felt for each other was real, but she would always be wrong. Because is it really Stockholm Syndrome if you loved them before they were more than just a partner? I don’t think you can, but my therapist disagrees and she’s the one with the degree, so she must be right. Right?

She laid out a recovery plan, and I was okay with that, but there were so many medications on our plan. Prozac for my anxiety, Valium for my panic attacks, muscle relaxers to help with my insomnia, and weekly therapy until further notice. I felt numb for the first four months of this routine. It was exhausting and we talked about the same things each week. My childhood didn’t matter here, and neither did my first heartbreak. All she wanted to talk about was him and what happened while we were there. The answer, though, was plain and simple.

He caught me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, but he didn’t get mad. Instead, he kept me fed, clothed, and cared for while I recovered from the concussion he gave me. When I started to feel better, he unlocked the basement and gave me a longer chain so I could roam the house freely.

She told me it was a delusion and consistent therapy, as well as keeping up with my medication schedule, would help me come to terms soon. She told me that believing that narrative he gave me was my brain’s way of protecting itself. Her narrative felt fabricated to me though, and I didn’t want it.

A throat cleared in the courtroom. It was his. I would know the sound of him clearing his throat anywhere. He wanted my attention. He wanted me to know that he was listening and worried about me. I let my eyes open and I finally looked up to my lawyer. She looked concerned, which meant I spent too much time with my eyes closed. I wrapped my hand around the water glass in front of me. The condensation dripping down the sides was cold against my skin, but it was enough to refocus my thoughts and prepare myself for what came next.

“Ms. Davis? Are you alright?”

“Yes, I apologize. It’s just a bit much all at once. I’m fine.” I saw him relax in his chair from my peripheral. He was always right there next to me when I was feeling anxious or unsure, just holding my hand and whispering nice thoughts in my ear. They usually consisted of our future. He wanted to build me a house, however big I wanted, and have a family with me. “I want a lot of kids, enough to fill every room in the house.” That was his dream, and it soon became mine too. He told me we would go somewhere where it would just be us and we could stay there until we grew old. But he couldn’t do that this time. He couldn’t touch me or speak to me. Hell, I couldn’t even work up the courage to look at him. “Please, I’d like to continue.”

“Actually, Ms. Davis, that was all I needed from you. You may leave the stand.” My heels clicked over the cold ground, his eyes watching every movement I made. I sat in my chair while my lawyer made her closing statement. I didn’t hear a single word of it. I took a chance and glanced to my right, toward his table. His lawyers were in between us, but I could see the curl of his hair pointed in my direction. He was looking at me too, no doubt wanting the same thing I was. I hope he understood why I struggled, though. To look at him was to continue to give myself to him. To look at him was to allow myself to keep loving a man I would never see again. To look at him would be handing him all the power I was meant to have.

But that is what my lawyer advised against.

The judge, a gruff looking man with a receding hairline and trifocals, dismissed the jury for deliberation. The room cleared out as my lawyer began to pack up her things to wait for their verdict.

“You did really well. I’m very proud of you.” I didn’t want to hear it though. I wasn’t proud of myself.

A chair screeched and the room quieted down. I heard the familiar fall of his footsteps, something I grew accustomed to when he walked through our house while I was still in the basement stages. They were steady and sure of themselves. It intimidated me for a few weeks, but if I listened close enough, I would be able to tell if he was coming down to the basement to spend time with me. We would watch movies and eat dinner together. I missed those nights the most. He was gentle and kind, and would bring me a present every week. He made a big show of it too, wrapping whatever it was and topping it with a bow and a kiss on my cheek.

With eyes attached to the ground, his shoes came into my view. They were dark brown, like his curls. The dark blue of his suit was the same shade of the first present he brought home for me. It was a dress, royal blue in color and small daisies all over the fabric. I remember throwing it in the corner because I didn’t understand that it meant he was going to take care of me. It stayed there for weeks, other presents piling up on top of it, until I came to my senses. I made sure to wear it the next time he came down to spend time with me.

I couldn’t stop myself this time. He was standing right in front of me, waiting for me to look up. I stopped at his hands. A guard was putting handcuffs around his wrists. They were already red. My heart panged at the thought of them hurting him like that. I had a similar, but more permanent mark around my ankle from when he had a cuff around it. It kept me from climbing the basement stairs if he left my room door open so I could have the space of the basement as well. But now we matched, even if it was temporary.

His tie was my favorite color. It didn’t match his suit at all, so I know he wore it just for me. But when I reached the base of his neck, he was pulled away. My eyes reached where his face should be as he was walking out the door and all I saw was the back of his head.

“Come on, let’s get you something to drink. You’re looking a little pale.” My best friend came to the trial. She was the one that found me. They fought in the backyard before the police showed up and she begged me to step away from him. I didn’t, and I let him drag me to his car, where the police were already waiting and had us cornered. She insisted that she sit where they could see each other because she wanted him to know “just how fucked he is.” She got her wish because the seat directly behind me gave her the perfect view of him, and if he had turned around, he would have seen her death glares.

She held the door open for me and walked with me to find my lawyer, who was waiting for me with a coffee in her hand. They rambled about everything that had happened in the courtroom and my best friend asked questions no one had the answers to.

We were called back to the room less than twenty minutes later. The jury had made their final decision so quickly that we all knew what it was going to be. Yet, suspense hung in the air, suffocating me in the process. He was going to be found guilty, I was sure of that, but he would receive a sentence and the research I had done on cases like ours gave grim amounts of time people spent behind bars. The battle between two different parts of me raged on. I didn’t want to know how bad it was going to be, but I needed to know.

I blocked out everything that was said up until I heard the judge ask the head juror to read their decision aloud to the room.

“We find the defendant guilty on all kidnapping charges, your honor.” Clapping thundered through the room. People congratulated me on my victory left and right. My lawyer hugged me and my best friend started crying. But everything felt the same to me though, and it didn’t feel like a victory. My body felt grief. It felt like I had lost a piece of myself, and it was a piece I was never going to get back. I no longer felt like a whole person.

We repeated the process again. Court was dismissed as the cheering died down and the judge disappeared to his chambers. I listened for his footsteps to walk in front of me and I slowly let my eyes crawl up his clothes. I hit his lips. They looked more pale than usual, but still just as soft as they were every time he spoke to me. His eyes, a light olive green, begged me for any kind of sign that I still cared. Of course I cared, but I wasn’t allowed to. I couldn’t tell him I did. He winced when the handcuffs were replaced on his wrists, right over the darkening red marks, but he never looked away. He raised his eyebrows and mouthed a small ‘I love you. Always,’ before he was dragged through the door and back to the cell I was told they were keeping him in until sentencing.

I was required to be at his sentencing, two weeks after the ending of our trial. He walked in, slumped over in the same dark blue suit. I wore the dress that matched it and he perked up when he saw that I put it on, just for him. The judge read his sentence out loud. 30 years with a chance of parole after 20. That’s how long he would spend in a small room, wearing chains around his wrists. I hated seeing the look on his face as it started to sink in. The color drained and he looked sick. I swear, if the room was any quieter, I would have been able to hear his heart beating at the thought of what was to come. I know mine was.

He looked scared as he passed me, and I felt as scared as he looked. 20 years is a long time to wear chains as an accessory, much longer than I did, and there wasn’t even a guarantee that he would be granted parole after those 20 years. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t gone into the basement when he told me not to. If I hadn’t seen what he was doing, then he would be free and we would be on his couch with Netflix on in the background and talking about what we wanted for dinner.

When he was gone and locked away for the first day of the next 30 years, I was ushered out of the courtroom. I could hear a horde of reporters outside and see their cameras at the bottom of the stairs. They were all going to want a statement from me talking about how relieved I was that he was behind bars and couldn’t hurt me anymore. They wanted a scorned woman to walk out the doors feeling triumphant.

But when I stepped out into the sunshine, my best friend’s arm linked around mine, it felt wrong. I didn’t want the sunshine. I wanted the storm that brewed inside my head to show through to reality.

I wanted him.