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Eve hears the helicopter before she sees it, a droning whir punctuated by a machine gun-like sputter, and she turns her face up towards the sky, squinting against the sun and against the small whirlwind of fine red dust that rises around her as the helicopter descends. Beside her, Alice shifts slightly, fingers light on the trigger of her gun, face grim and eyes level as she scans the landing pad for any trouble, like the good soldier she is. It's a sunny April day in Kigali, and the spring air is warm, but Eve shudders slightly. Were her mind not elsewhere, she probably would chalk it up to the sudden onslaught of the wind, to the slight menace of the helicopter falling slowly to earth, a shrieking blot of darkness against the unending clear blue of the sky.
She would not attribute it to the fact that her life is about to change forever.
The helicopter finally alights on the pad, like some grotesque bird, and sits there screaming its choppy scream. Eunice tumbles out its side first, curls a dusty windblown mess, clothes rumpled and face closed off. And then there's Ed, moving with his typical slow deliberateness, gripping the handhold next to the door tightly with only one hand so he doesn't have to let go of what's in his other, as his feet hit the ground.
"Eve," he shouts over the din of the copter's blades, and he carefully makes his way towards her. The laughter has gone out of his eyes, and she wants to do what she usually does when this happens, wants to take him in her arms and cradle him and speak soft and gentle words to him, until it's possible to manage to the pain again. Not to forget, they've learnt over the years together, never to forget; but to manage, so that life can move forward.
Instinctively, her hand reaches out to him, offering comfort, but instead she receives what he's now carrying in both arms. A child, probably six or seven years old, blood soaking her shirt through, shivering feebly with fever. Ed is far stockier than Eve, even after weeks of living on thin rations on the outskirts of a cholera-stricken refugee camp in Zaire; but despite the fact that Ed usually teases Eve that a strong gust of wind could blow her away, Eve finds that the emaciated girl weighs nearly nothing in her arms.
"Ed," Eve says hesitantly, wanting to ask him to stay, knowing he'll say no if there's any chance he can do some good by leaving.
"Take good care of her, Evie." Ed's beautiful deep voice is intense over the insistent drone of the helicopter rotors. With his haggard gaze, he gives the pair of them a long look, and Eve wonders what he sees. She nods, and the corner of his mouth turns up in what passes for a smile amongst those who, bone-weary, still find themselves rushing straight back into hell.
I love you, Eve thinks, as she watches him jog back to the helicopter and duck under its whirring blades. She's always been bad at public displays of affection, gets a bit embarrassed when Ed holds her hand in public, even though everyone knows that they're engaged and (more importantly) that they're utterly devoted to one another. Ed knows how much she loves him, and she can wait to tell him as much again, wait until this latest stretch of an interminable war is over, and there's time to lie quietly in each other's arms and kiss from one another's cheeks the tears they've had to hold back in the thick of it all. She watches the helicopter rise back into the air, already mourning Ed's absence, loving him all the more for his unceasing quest to make the world a better place. Alice and Eunice stand beside her as the helicopter disappears, their faces as grim as Eve's.
"One of fifty thousand," Alice says finally, hand still resting delicately on her gun as she glances at the child.
Her voice is steady, objective, almost flat, like that of any general who has seen the worst of battle, but Eve detects an undercurrent of self-accusatory despair lancing through her bitter words. Alice takes such pride in being Tutsi, takes such pride in the professionalism of the Rwanda Patriotic Front. She wanted so badly to stop this from happening, wanted to believe that the bloodshed is over and it's now possible for her country to heal itself. Eve tries to think of something to say, anything that might offer a modicum of relief for a wound that is too deep to avoid festering, but before she can think of anything remotely appropriate, Eunice doubles over.
"Fifty-thousand people dying," she gasps between dry-heaves. "Jesus Christ. They were like skeletons lying there, too weak to move. You could count their ribs without trying, as you walked through the camp. And now, four days later, it's all gone, like it was never there. 'Dismantled', or whatever those shits called it. We flew over it out of Kisangani. Not a damn indication any of them ever existed. Fuck. Fuck."
Alice slings her gun back over her shoulder and grips Eunice's shoulders until she stops shaking quite so violently and begins to take deep breaths. Eve stands by, watching helplessly, her arms filled with the only survivor of yet another act of senseless killing.
"But they did exist," Alice reminds her, her hands solid on Eunice's frame but her eyes smouldering with something like vengeance. "And we will make sure that the world never, ever forgets. We owe it to her," she adds, turning and looking at the girl clutched in Eve's arms. "She is evidence that it happened."
Evidence. Eve shivers a bit at how detached and clinical the term is, and her grip tightens a bit around the small, too-warm person who is so much more than just a legal exhibit. The child isn't fully conscious, but her bloody fingers curl fiercely into the pristine white of Eve's shirt, claiming her in return.
"Hospital," says Eve abruptly. "You, too, Eunice—if I may be blunt, Ed said he was afraid you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and it's probably best you seek out treatment."
"Yeah, well, I'd try to deny it, but looks like my fucking diaphragm is outing me," croaks Eunice with a twisted smile, her breaths still coming in uneven hiccups.
"We'll take my car," announces Alice, and then she stops and fixes Eve with a hard stare. "The truth will come out eventually, Eve. But for the moment, she is a Tutsi child, you understand?"
Eve hesitates, poised to argue that a Hutu should be treated with as much care as a Tutsi, now that the fighting is done—but the poor girl's very predicament is enough to dispel that fantasy. Besides, Eve's been in Tanzania since the international community decided to set up shop far across the border, and even there, she's heard enough about the overflowing prisons in Rwanda, filled with accused Hutu génocidaires awaiting a due process that is anything but forthcoming. Alice, by contrast, has actually been here, walking this fragile tightrope for the past two years, and Eve scolds herself for daring to question Alice in this.
"Yes," Eve nods, and Alice holds the door for her as she slides into the seat with the child trembling in her lap. Eve does not let go until the doctors pull the girl from her arms, Alice now holding her back with a firm hand on her shoulder, the scrap of cloth that she's just cut from the girl's shirt clutched in one blood-smeared hand. As Eve watches the operating room door close, she wraps her arms around herself, the girl's blood soaking from the front of Eve's now-ruined shirt into her sleeves.
The girl nearly doesn't survive. Once, then twice, then three times, each feverish incident passing in a blur of sleepless hours and knuckles clenched white against the plastic of waiting-room chairs. Eve phones Mark Viner and tells him she won't be able to return to Arusha for an undetermined length of time, asks him to send work over to Kigali to keep her occupied. She sits late into the night next to the girl's bedside, glasses perched on her nose as she skims translated witness statements, glancing every so often at the frail-looking child breathing laboriously through an oxygen mask, her thin arms almost comically overloaded with IV drips. The work calms her, distracts her, and Eve is grateful for it—even though when she closes her eyes, she wakes from uneasy dreams, breaths rapid, half-formed imaginings of the atrocities she's been reading about skittering back into her subconscious like cockroaches fleeing from the light.
"For Christ's sake, Eve, you've got to eat something," Eunice tells her, flinging a bag of crisps at Eve one evening as she flings herself into a chair on the other side of the hospital bed. She sighs as she stares at the girl. "Poor kid. She doing okay?"
Eve nods tersely, almost afraid to jinx how stable the girl is right now, as if one overly confident word will send the steady beep of the monitors into yet another frenzy of flat lines and shouting nurses.
"You seem to be doing better, too," remarks Eve, setting aside a massive stack of paper and tearing open the crisps, in no small part because she knows that Eunice is going to sit there until she finishes the entire bag.
"I am loaded up on anti-depressants, my friend," says Eunice, almost cheerfully. "Could start my own pharmacy, if it came to it. Almost sleeping full nights again, at any rate. There goes my chance of ever being able to pass a government security clearance, of course—State doesn't want nutters with psychiatric issues negotiating with the Ruskies—but hey, at least it'll keep me from completely crashing and burning in the present?"
"Things might change," Eve reassures her quietly. "Ed always says that the people who designed your security clearances were all old, straight, white men in the 1970s, and when State gets around to updating things, perhaps they'll be more enlightened?"
Eunice laughs a weary laugh and sprawls backwards in her chair.
"Yeah, one always can hope that my polar opposites won't be running the place by then. Ed's infinitely more optimistic than I am on that count, lucky bastard." For a moment, she considers apologising to Eve for calling her fiancé such a thing, just because Eve sometimes comes across as so extremely proper; but it's a well-established fact that Eve and Ed know everything about each other, even things that can't be spoken aloud; and that means that Eve almost certainly knows that Eunice adores Ed, like the big brother she always wishes she'd had. She watches as Eve's expression grows increasingly distant, then adds, "He'll be back soon, Eve. Just you wait."
Eve blinks back to the present, then shoots Eunice a tiny smile, her dark eyes still glistening with worry as she twists her slim silver band around her finger. (Eunice remembers teasing Ed once, about the fact that he'd bought the love of his life an engagement ring so lacking in sparkly gems. Ed very seriously gave Eunice a lengthy lecture on the inhumanity of blood diamonds, before cracking a smile and adding with a wink, "Besides, if you hadn't noticed, we're not exactly being paid like investment bankers here—unless you're getting some bonus I'm not?" Typical Ed.)
In the end, it's Eunice who knows where to find Eve, when John Hopkinson Refugee Relief Fund alerts its entire staff that a helicopter has gone down delivering aid in Zaire: four fatalities, no bodies recovered. Eve's enormous eyes widen in her pale face the instant Eunice appears in the doorway of the hospital room, her own eyes swollen from crying, the anti-depressants utterly useless in the face of such a personal loss. When the news leaves her lips, Eunice feels for a moment that Eve Ashby—who has always seemed so impossibly poised and unflappable, even in the face of catastrophe—freezes for a moment into a beautiful statue, perfectly still, a tragic heroine from a Shakespeare play; and that a part of Eve never quite thaws from that moment onwards, even after she resumes being a woman and collapses with an almost animal-like howl of pain. Eunice, who has cried all the tears she has to shed and now is more hollow than she has ever felt in her life, simply holds Eve as the older woman sobs, clinging to Eunice as if she'll be washed away by her own tears, all courtroom polish and dignity dissolved in the onslaught of her grief.
"I can't bear it," she moans into Eunice's shoulder, her body limp and helpless in Eunice's arms.
"You've got to," Eunice tells her, shocked at how calm she sounds (given that she, Eunice, is always the glib, hyperbolic one, not a rational stoic like Eve or Alice). "For Ed. For everything he stood for."
"I can't go on without him," Eve insists. "He was my rock, Eunice. I loved him more than life."
"I know," says Eunice. She strokes Eve's hair, the way Eunice's mama used to comfort her when she was young and had awoken from bad dreams (the way Eunice used to stroke her mama's hair when the chemo for her ovarian cancer left her too weak to even weep). "But if he were here right now, he'd tell you to go on without him. He'd tell you that you've got to keep on living, and fighting. So he wouldn't have died in vain."
Eve hiccups slightly, then nods, and Eunice holds her close as Eve's breathing evens out just a bit.
"Besides," Eunice adds, tilting her head towards the girl in the hospital bed, "you promised Ed you'd take care of her. Maybe you can take care of each other, from here on out."
And although Eve will never let Ed go completely, she nods tentatively and manages to seat herself upright in her own chair again. She doesn't touch the stacks of papers next to her; those can wait until morning. But in the dim twilight of the room, surrounded by the tinny beeps of machinery and the smell of disinfectant, Eunice watches Eve set her jaw determinedly and lean forward slightly, eyes intense, as if willing life back into the prone little body supported by its network of tubes. And despite the grief weighing down her own heart, Eunice feels something tiny unclench in her chest as she remembers that, even when Shakespearean heroines turn into statues, they'll still always warm back to life for the sake of their daughters.
Eve's face is still drawn and gaunt when the girl's eyes finally flutter open and, after blinking in confusion a few times, she recoils in fear from the tubes stabbed into her arms and the ghost-pale figure that moves towards her.
"It's all right," Eve tells the trembling girl, smiling the best reassuring smile she can muster.
But the girl's breath heaves into and out of her body in sharp gasps of panic, and what begin as stammering words quickly escalate into shaky screams. Eve's Swahili is bad, and her Kinyarwanda is even worse; Sorcha, jealous of Eve's strong marks in school, had always sniffed down her nose at how rubbish Eve was at languages, at how she faltered over even the most basic phrases of Gaeilge, even as Sorcha drank in their mother tongue and used it to sing the revolution with a fierce 'Óró, sé do bheatha 'bhaile'. But despite her linguistic mediocrity, Eve can recognise the word 'mzungu' clearly enough, and when the poor girl starts wailing for her mama, Eve hears the meaning loud and clear, would hear it even if the word weren't the same in Kinyarwanda as in English.
She reaches out a hand to the girl, wanting to comfort, desperate to make her meaning understood. The girl slaps weakly at Eve's hand, still sobbing, and Eve withdraws entirely as the nurses come flooding into the little room in a flurry of white scrubs, summoned by the commotion.
Sometime later that afternoon, Michael arrives.
"Oh, Eve," he sighs when he sees her crumpled in a corner of the hospital waiting room, tight-lipped, a pen clutched in one hand like a knife. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and after a moment, she drops the pen and the memo, rises unsteadily to her feet, and lets herself be enveloped by Michael's solid embrace. He holds her for a long moment, offering quiet solidarity in his own grief; and when he finally pulls away, he eyes her critically, his sharp gaze taking in the dark bags under her tired eyes, how her spritely slimness suddenly comes across as fragility. "You holding up?"
Eve nods, jerkily, then sinks into her chair with her hand over her eyes. Michael gives her the space she needs, politely offers Eve his handkerchief, winces when she dabs her eyes on a corner that's definitely not clean.
"Mark Viner called me yesterday," he says, as conversationally as possible, once it seems appropriate. "Said he's planning to retire at the end of the year. Sorry to do it, but his health isn't what it used to be, and he thinks it's wisest to go back to his family in London, in case things take a turn for the worse."
Eve nods, still not looking at him, trying to compose herself. Michael can't tell from this reaction if the news is already old to her, but he decides it's not important.
"You don't have to stay," he continues gently. "In fact, if I were in your shoes, I don't know if I would. But, if you do want to come back to Arusha, I could use a junior, starting at the end of the year."
For the first time since the conversation began, Eve's eyes flicker with something other than pain, and she sits up a bit straighter in her chair, finally daring to look straight at Michael. Thank god, thinks Michael, warm relief seeping slowly outwards from his chest and through his shoulders, because this is the Eve Ashby he knows, the diminutive-seeming woman with a polite smile and justice blazing beacon-like in her soul. He's glad to see that, however heavy the weight she's under may be, it should yet be possible to dig her out.
"Akayesu?" Eve asks, and he's pretty sure the breathlessness in her voice is pure excitement.
"Come find out for yourself. It'll be a landmark of a case, I can promise you that. Precedent-setting for the entire Tribunal, not to mention any tribunals to come." The corner of Michael's mouth turns up as he and Eve stare at each other expectantly, she seizing the lifeline he's offered her. "So, you in?"
Eve's mouth twitches into a smile for a brief moment. But then the fire dims again, and she tilts her head towards the hallway of the hospital.
"And what about her?" she asks.
Michael's eyes flicker to the hallway and then back.
"You think she'll still be in hospital, come December?"
"Jesus, Michael," sighs Eve, sliding backwards in her chair. "I bloody well hope not, but even if not, I don't know where we'll be by then. What she'll need from me."
"You're not thinking of keeping her?"
"Keeping her," scoffs Eve, scowling at him; and Michael blanches at the crudity of his chosen term, wishing it had occurred to him to use 'adopting' instead. "I promised Ed I'd take care of her, Michael. I promised. It's the least I can do." Her mouth twists into a bitter smile. "Pity she hates me already. Screamed when she woke up and found me in the room with her, not four hours ago. Just another mzungu, here to throw her world into chaos."
"She can't hate you," Michael points out rationally. "She doesn't even know you, Eve. You can't blame her for being completely terrified. She's just lost everything she ever knew, including nearly her life, and then woken up in a different world. Give it a little time before you start speaking in absolutes."
Eve, who is accustomed to being good at nearly everything from the get-go (languages aside), shoots him a quizzical look. Michael sighs and decides to put things into a frame she'll understand.
"The Security Council established the Tribunal in, what, November 1994? Months after the worst of the genocide ended. And here we are, looking at the first actual prosecutions set to start more than three years later. But we've needed that time, Eve. You know that as well as I do. We've needed to put together air-tight dossiers for each of the génocidaires we put in the dock. Convince witnesses to come forward, verify their statements. It's not a speedy process, but it's what needs to be done, for justice to be done properly. Because some things need that much time to be built up properly. Justice. Trust. Love."
Eve sighs softly, but she nods.
"How long can you give me, to make up my mind?"
"Uh, I'm guessing OTP's gonna want a yes or no by September or October. Maybe a little later, given that Louise Arbour seems like a reasonable human being." Michael puts his hand on Eve's shoulder again and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Take care of yourself, Eve. Give me a call, if you ever want to talk shop, or about anything else."
Michael is almost out the door when Eve speaks again.
"Will you promise me something?"
He turns and waits, unwilling to commit to something he can't guarantee.
"The recording," she says quietly. "Promise me it'll be submitted to OTP, Michael? No matter what happens, will you promise me that?"
It's a dangerous promise to make, but Michael can see the desperation in Eve's eyes, her need to make some sense of what Ed died for. He nods.
"We'll make sure they all know, Eve. One day. For him. For her."
It's not as definite an answer as Eve wants or needs, but it's what he can afford. Eve grants him the faintest flicker of a smile, and as Michael slips out of the door of the hospital, she resumes her silent vigil, wrapping herself in the paper ghosts of the genocide.
Eve is almost afraid to stay in the hospital room for the next time the girl awakes, but she keeps her promises, and so she stays put. When the girl opens her eyes again, Eve steels herself for more hysteria, but instead the girl stares at her with enormous brown eyes, uncertain but silent. Eve hesitates, then puts down her latest set of interview notes and stands. The little girl holds her gaze steadily as Eve approaches the bedside and smiles tentatively at her.
"Hello," says Eve softly, and the girl blinks at her, eyes cautiously trusting. "Are you feeling better?"
She doesn't expect the girl to understand her, but when the girl points to a juice box on the tray just next to her bed, Eve carefully hands it over, grateful to be of some use. The girl takes a few tentative sips, then whispers something in Kinyarwanda. It's not for Eve to hear, so she simply waits until the girl seems done with the juice box and takes it back when it's handed over. The girl repeats the sentence in a trembling voice, and then breaks down into quiet little sobs, ones infinitely more fragile and heartbreaking than her outright screams. And even though Eve's own world has just been turned upside-down, she knows that her own loss and grief can't even begin to compare to those of this poor, lonely, lost child, who has so little agency over her own life. The girl cries to herself, and Eve sits by, unsure what to do. Finally, she reaches out and gently lays a hand on the girl's too-thin forearm and gives it a reassuring squeeze. The girl stops crying quite as desperately, more from surprise than anything else, but Eve continues to softly rub the girl's forearm with her thumb. When the girl's eyelids finally begin to droop, Eve does her best to fluff the pancake-flat hospital pillows a bit, before tucking them back under the girl's head.
They build up a silent relationship in this manner. The girl is never surprised to wake up and see Eve working from the plastic chair opposite; and Eve is oddly touched when, upon arriving one afternoon, one of the nurses informs her that the girl asked that morning where Eve was. It's an odd process, one pieced together through countless small smiles and waves, through the little girl's delight when Eve brings her sweets or, one memorable day, a small giraffe soft toy that the girl cradles lovingly to her chest.
"You two seem to be getting on quite well, now," Alice comments one day when she appears at the door of the hospital room. "Michael mentioned you'd had a bit of a rough start."
Eve, who has with some effort procured a pack of paper dolls, looks up from the dress she's cutting out for the fascinated child. Alice is some twenty years Eve's junior, yet she carries herself with such poise and self-confidence that Eve has always been slightly in awe of the younger woman. Much as Eve worries about the impact of Michael's continuing affair with Alice, because of how it must impact Jenny and little Hana, she can certainly appreciate why Michael is drawn to Alice's grounded charisma. (The one time Eve directly broached the subject of the affair with Michael, Michael went quite red and said something about Alice's being in his hotel room all night long for a 'refresher on the Geneva Convention', and that's the phrase by which Eve, deadpan, has referred to Michael's trysts with Alice ever since. Only with Michael, though—Eve wouldn't have the nerve to say anything about the matter in front of Alice, even if Alice weren't in military intelligence and an acclaimed former general and terrifyingly adept at handling several types of weapons.)
Now, she watches as Alice approaches the young girl, who first glances at Eve to ascertain whether this is a friend or foe, then gazes up in fascination as Alice moves to the side of the bed. Eve listens as Alice asks the girl a question in Kinyarwanda and feels a pang of envy as the girl responds.
"What did she say?"
"I asked her how she was doing, and she said good, since her friend is here with her." That's enough to make Eve's heart flutter just a bit, to know that she's considered a friend, and Alice smiles as she watches a range of emotions dance across the lawyer's face.
"I feel a bit silly," Eve laughs, flustered. "To think I've made a friend without ever having really introduced myself." She stands and crosses over to the bed. "I'm Eve," she says, placing a hand on her chest.
Alice translates, and the girl repeats Eve's name, experimenting with the unfamiliar syllables on her tongue. When Alice asks the obvious follow-up, though, the girl looks confused and then shakes her head.
"She doesn't remember her own name," Alice sighs. "I guess otherwise, you would have found out, before now, linguistic barriers be damned."
Eve nods, her heart hurting as she considers just how much the little girl must be suppressing, to have willfully forgotten who she is.
"What would you like to be called?" she asks the girl, and Alice dutifully translates.
The girl pauses for a moment, considering, and instead of answering, she asks Alice a question in return. Alice laughs and responds, and just when Eve is starting to feel somewhat left out, Alice explains, "She wants to know why I can understand you, and she can't. I explained that I learned your language, and she wants to know if she can, too."
"Yes," Eve responds, a flickering smile dancing across her face as she turns to the girl. "You can. I'd like that very much." After a moment, she grins sheepishly and explains, "I'd like to be able to talk with you properly, but I'm guessing you'd be much better at learning my language than I'd be at learning yours."
Alice, who once nearly spewed half a mouthful of urwagwa out of her nose upon hearing Eve's attempts at Kinyarwanda, translates with a smile. And the little girl with no name nods seriously.
It's around this time that the hospital decides that the little girl has healed enough (physically, at least) to be discharged. The nurses explain this to Eve when she arrives one morning with a bag filled with English-language children's books that Michael has lent her from Hana's bookshelves.
"So we will make arrangements with the orphanage," one of the nurses concludes with a decisive nod.
"No," Eve says quickly, and she hesitates as the nurses all stare at her coolly. "No. I'd... I'd like to keep her with me."
Even though it's been her intention all along, the words sound impossibly foolish to Eve as she speaks them aloud. She knows nothing about parenting, knows even less about parenting a survivor of such intense trauma, can barely exchange more than a basic greeting with this little girl. Eve can understand why all of the nurses are staring at her like they are, like she's sprouted a second head or proposed that she and the child fly to the moon together in a hot air balloon. Yet in her heart, she knows it's the right thing to do, no matter the challenges, as surely as she knows that it is right for her to hold to account the people who incited their entire country into such thoughtless slaughter, however fraught her work with the Tribunal may become. And perhaps the nurses see this determination in Eve's face, for after a moment, one of them leads Eve into the girl's room and presumably explains the situation. The girl listens thoughtfully, and then she climbs out of her bed with her giraffe soft toy clutched under one arm, and she takes Eve's hand.
Eve knows nothing about being a mother, and the sensation of this young girl's hand in her own is as foreign as anything associated with parenting. Yet, in this moment, it all feels absolutely, unconditionally right.
The nurse asks the girl a question that the girl answers with a shake of her head.
"I need to know her name," the nurse explains. "To put on the papers to discharge her."
Eve glances down at the girl, this girl who has chosen Eve, who has put her confidence in Eve's ability to make the right decisions for her. The girl looks back with calm, trusting eyes, waiting for Eve's answer.
"Katherine," replies Eve automatically, because it was the name she and Ed had always agreed on for a girl (the name of her mother and his favourite sister). "Kate," she amends after a moment; the shorter angularity of the nickname seems more fitting for this small, intense girl. "You can put down 'Kate Ashby'."
The little girl silently watches as the nurses fill out the paperwork, her hand clutching Eve's all the while. It doesn't take long, but in that short time, Eve feels as if some unspoken compact has been created between them, something that goes beyond formal state-mandated obligation. She's not this child's legal guardian yet, let alone an adoptive parent, but she can sense the tacit agreement that, from now on, she will protect this child from any further harm that the world might try to inflict upon her—can perceive it as tangibly as if it were a sworn oath taken and solemnified before a court of law.
The nurse hands the hospital discharge form to Eve, and Eve scrawls her own signature onto the form.
"Good luck to you both," says the nurse.
And with that, Eve Ashby exits the hospital, Kate Ashby's hand still clutching hers as they make their way together out into the unknown of the world beyond.
Arusha, the Geneva of Africa, lounges at the foot of Mount Meru in a tidy sprawl of brightly coloured buildings and streets cutting each other at clean right angles and diagonals. Everything is precisely the same and completely different from how it felt when Eve left for Kigali two months ago. She stands in the doorway of her flat for a moment, disoriented, before Kate tugs gently at her hand, and Eve shakes herself and lets Kate enter her new home for the first time. The girl stands frozen in the middle of the living room, as if afraid to move, and it finally occurs to Eve that of course a girl whose entire memory consists of a famine-stricken refugee camp, would treat even a modest flat with confusion. She sits down on the sofa and invites Kate to join her with a gesture; then, once Kate is settled, Eve bustles about in the kitchen to make whatever can be made with the ingredients in her cupboards (pasta and marinara sauce will have to do). Kate absorbs it all gracefully enough, but Eve is unsurprised when the poor girl starts yawning at an early hour at the dinner table, no doubt somewhat overwhelmed by the cascade of recent changes. Eve tucks Kate into her own bed—the bed that she and Ed once shared—and intends to retreat to the sofa, only Kate says something in a tone of protest when Eve makes for the door of the bedroom, and so Eve is dozing on the other side of the bed when Kate wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.
All of Eve's friends with children have complained to her at one point or another about how endlessly exhausting parenting is—the sleepless nights, the constant vigilance. But none of her friends have ever told her how to help a child recover from a panic attack triggered by nightmares of unimaginable violence. Eve rubs soothing circles into Kate's back with one hand, murmurs comforting words that she knows Kate cannot understand, over-exaggerates her deep breaths until Kate catches on and follows suit. Once Kate's breathing has slowed, though, Eve isn't sure how to proceed; she's never dared to hug Kate, always worried that uninvited physical contact will trigger some unexpected reaction. But Kate solves the problem for Eve by slumping against Eve's side, exhausted, and then leaning even further into Eve when she tentatively wraps her arms around the poor girl. Kate descends slowly back into slumber as Eve holds her and rocks her very gently side to side. Part of Eve is still reeling from the shock and surprise of Kate's outburst, but in her own bleary state, she finds it unexpectedly easy to focus instead on the tenderness slowly unfurling inside of her chest as she comforts her child.
Settling into a new routine in Arusha takes time. Eve sets up another bed in the small room that previously served as an office and restocks the refrigerator with foods Kate points to at the supermarket. She finds a Kinyarwanda-speaking English tutor for Kate, and she listens to their lessons from the kitchen table as she reviews the reams of new documents sent over by the Office of the Prosecutor for her review. Eve isn't at all surprised to find that a razor-sharp mind exists behind those keen eyes of Kate's, and within only a week or two, Kate is able to carry on conversations in English that, although very elementary, nonetheless make both Eve and Kate alike beam with excitement. Michael comes by every few evenings, to discuss strategy and recent developments at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with Eve in low voices, and he witnesses the rapid changes in Kate's English-language comprehension with no small degree of fascination.
"Why do you speak different from me or Eve?" Kate demands of Michael, when she appears suddenly at his side during one of these evening visits.
"Sorry?" Michael asks, pulling himself from some internal musing over the definition of 'genocide' in Article 2 of the ICTR Statute.
"I think she means your accent," Eve smiles.
"Oh." Michael shrugs. "Well, I grew up in the United States, where we have our own way of talking. Kind of like how you and Eve talk differently."
"We do not!" protests Kate in the lilting tones of her Rwanda-born English tutor.
Michael clearly needs a mental and emotional break from parsing how an individualised crime like rape can be legally transmuted to a collective violation like genocide. So he instead engages Kate for a while on the phonology and intonation of accents, which involves no small degree of his impersonating Eve for contrast, which makes Eve laugh as hard as does Kate. By the end of the conversation, Kate has started to figure out for herself the distinctions between the various English-language accents to which she's been exposed.
"I will only speak like Eve, from now on," she declares in surprisingly passable Received Pronunciation, as she leaves the lawyers to continue their discussion.
"Hmm." Michael, who's heard plenty about Eve's migration from Ireland, turns a bemused smile on Eve. "Like mother, like daughter, no?"
Eve shrugs slightly, trying not to look too proud.
"She still calls me 'Eve', though," she points out, a trickle of hurt seeping into her voice.
"Give it time," Michael reminds her quietly. "It's only been three months." He hesitates. "Eve, are you sure you're doing okay?"
"Yes, of course," Eve replies automatically. "She's doing wonderfully, on the whole. Everything's fine."
"Oh, I mean, Kate's fantastic," Michael agrees. "Damn smart kid, clearly—as I said, like mother, like daughter. But even if she's doing great, it's still a lot to adjust to, your being back here and picking all of this back up, on top of adapting to being someone's caretaker."
"If you think my work is suffering..." Eve begins, suddenly panicked that she's underperforming. (Organising life around Kate does add stress to her days, in small ways she wouldn't have expected, not to mention the fact that Kate still wakes up screaming more nights than not.)
"No, not at all," Michael reassures her. "Just, we all tend to bite off more than we can chew, don't we, in our personal quests to save the world? And since I know you're not going to look out for yourself as carefully as you could, I figured I'd ask the questions you probably weren't asking yourself."
It's the sort of thing that Ed would have said to her. Eve takes a moment to stifle a sob that's driven equally by her grief for Ed and her appreciation for Michael. After another minute of candid self-evaluation, she repeats, "I'm fine. But please keep asking me these questions, Michael, in case one day I realise I'm not."
And so life continues. Kate's grasp of the English language reaches levels of fluency sooner than Eve ever could have expected, and her new tutor teaches not language, but instead the educational fundamentals that Kate never was offered in the refugee camp—letters, reading, writing, numbers, basic addition and subtraction. Kate takes to books like a duck to water, and Eve quickly finds her evening ritual of reading Kate to sleep turned on its head, with Kate instead proudly reading aloud to Eve until Eve gently insists that Kate put the book down for the night. Meanwhile, the trial chambers of the ICTR slowly grind into action; Michael's visits become longer and more frequent, he and his junior staying up late into the night, reviewing documents and revising submissions over countless cups of coffee at Eve's kitchen table. And finally the day arrives when Eve finds herself once more robed and seated as Michael's second chair, printed copies of their submissions for the court stacked neatly on the edge of their table. Everything exactly as it should be. Everything occurring precisely as planned. It feels surreal to Eve, whose life has been such a whirlwind of instability and surprises recently, to watch as Michael calmly presents their novel arguments to the judges of the Tribunal. This is justice for Ed, she thinks, the ferocity of her certainty cutting through her overall state of mild disbelief. This is justice for Kate.
The evening before the Tribunal announces its finding in their case, Eve answers a polite knock at her front door.
"Ms Ashby," smiles the man waiting there.
"Mr Runihura," Eve replies. She opens the door a bit wider for him. "Please, come in."
David Runihura carries himself with the smooth poise of a politician, but in a manner that never completely masks the hyper-alertness of the soldier he once was. He strides into Eve's flat and seems to take in the entire living room with one deft sweep of his eyes, surveying the landscape for threat, grin easy and gaze calculating. He sits when Eve gestures to a chair and declines her offer of tea with a small shake of his head.
"So." Eve seats herself on the sofa opposite. "How may I help you this evening?"
"Do you somehow think that you haven't already helped enough?" chuckles David. "I came here merely to say thank you. Please know that your herculean efforts at the Tribunal have not gone unnoticed."
Eve inclines her head modestly.
"I take it, you will be returning to England, then, once the trial chamber announces its verdict?" David continues.
"That remains to be seen. Plenty more to do here."
"Hmm." David folds his hands together, his smile unwavering. "That may be true. But the question then becomes, who should be doing that work? You?"
Eve tilts her head quizzically.
"You mustn't misunderstand me," David clarifies. "What your Tribunal has achieved is vitally important. Without the attention and support of the international community, Rwanda would not be re-emerging from this tragedy in the way that it is. The court's operations create confidence within the international community that Rwanda, despite the horrors of the recent past, is eager to stare its demons in the face and, having exorcised them, engage with the rest of the world as a nation reborn."
"But?" Eve replies coolly. "Don't tell me you're here to give me a lecture on western legal imperialism, David?"
"Nothing that hasn't already crossed your own mind." David shrugs. "You know the numbers, Eve. You can forecast, just as well as I, how many decades it would take for the Tribunal to prosecute every Hutu génocidaire filling our prisons, even if things were moving much faster. And you know that, as engaged as the international community is right now, when the Tribunal is shiny and new, the enthusiasm will not continue indefinitely. We are already making plans to accommodate how things must inevitably go, when the time and money and patience of the rest of the world runs out, and Rwanda must take justice into its own hands."
"As well you should," Eve agrees levelly. "So long as said justice aligns with due process and the other procedural protections of the Universal Declaration and the ICCPR."
"Do not doubt our abilities."
"I do not doubt your intentions. But idealism is easy. Implementation is more difficult. And I wouldn't want your credibility tarnished by accusations of victor's justice."
"Victor's justice," snorts David dismissively. "They may call it what they wish. It is justice, pure and simple, meted out to those who slaughtered 800,000 of my people. If it is 'victor's justice', then that is because we fought to defend our own, and we won."
"And you had every right to do so," sighs Eve. "But if you're truly intent on healing the wounds within your country, David, you'll have to hold all sides equally accountable."
"You mean, like the Americans were held accountable at Nuremberg and Tokyo, for Dresden and Hiroshima?" David quirks his head ironically to one side. "Hmm. Well, as you just said, perhaps idealism is easy and implementation is more difficult."
"Don't take the failures of others as permission to fail here," Eve warns him. "Why not do better than them?"
A smirk spreads across David's face.
"And what if the Tutsi génocidaires you keep imagining, simply do not exist?" he asks. "What then? Will you still fault us for prosecuting only Hutus?"
"But they do exist!" Eve hisses. "You're not a fool, David. Simon Nyamoya..."
"Is not facing prosecution by your Tribunal, is he," interrupts David coolly. "And, if the Tribunal is the international gold-standard for a justice that we cannot provide for ourselves, here in Rwanda, what does that mean?"
Eve cannot answer him, and she does not even try to. David lets her sit with her thoughts for a few long moments, hands folded neatly, smile polite and vicious.
"You may stay for as long as you'd like, Eve," he says finally. "After all, we in Rwanda could not revoke your visa to be here in Tanzania, even if we tried, could we?" (He says it with a slight laugh, as if it is a joke.) "I, for one, will not forget what you have done for my people, regardless of what you do."
The silence lingers between them as Eve bitterly accepts her guest's twisted gratitude for a too-one-sided justice. And then Kate's voice sails loud and clear into the living room, singing along to the film she's recently taken to watching obsessively on repeat: For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down / In the most delightful way! David's eyebrows quirk upwards.
"But then, it seems someone is taking quite enthusiastically to British culture, no? Why not take her out of Rwanda and back to London, let her find a new identity there?"
"We'll see," says Eve coolly, and she stands so David knows it's time for him to leave. "Goodbye, David."
"Good luck tomorrow," he nods to her.
Not twenty-four hours later, David has been replaced on Eve's sofa by Michael, and he and Eve giggle as they clink champagne flutes.
"To an absolutely stunning victory," Michael declares, raising his glass to Eve. "To a victory that has fundamentally changed how future courts will conceptualise the term 'genocide', from this point forward! We made history today, Eve. Jesus, I feel like I could fly right now!"
"Best not to try," Eve laughs. "I don't think I'd be able to drag you to hospital, when you inevitably broke several limbs in the attempt." She takes a small sip of her own champagne. "So, what now?"
"Whatever we like," Michael says, gesturing expansively. "You think OTP's gonna deny us any case we want, coming off of a win like this?"
"Will they?"
Michael's giddy grin wavers as he catches Eve's meaning, and he puts his champagne flute down with unexpected sobriety. Eve holds his gaze as steadily as she holds the champagne flute in her own hands.
"Not yet, Eve," Michael sighs finally. He rubs a regretful palm across his jaw. "You know as well as I do that that's a step too far."
"We'll never know for sure, if we don't even ask."
"No." Michael's voice is soft and sad, but it brooks no room for argument. "Listen. It's not that I don't agree with you, because god knows I do. But the world's not ready yet."
"And when will the world be ready?" Eve challenges him. "Because if the Tribunal continues to refuse to prosecute the RPF for war crimes, then how does the narrative of that truth survive?"
"We'll keep it alive," Michael promises. "We have the evidence. The right moment will come, believe me. Maybe after things have been rebuilt a little, when people have developed the resilience to withstand truths that might shatter them right now. For the powers that be to engage with what justice the Tribunal can offer, we need to offer something that will seem like closure, against the side that committed the vast majority of the harm. Nothing too complicated. Only for the time being, of course; once everyone feels on more solid ground, we can complicate the narrative. But, for now, we wait."
Eve stares at him, dark eyes glistening with hurt and betrayal.
"Michael..."
"I'm sorry," he repeats. "But there's nothing we can do right now."
The worst part is that Eve knows that, politically speaking, Michael is right; and as she confronts the internal chorus of when? when? when? that echoes within her mind over the next few days, she hates herself for the small part of her brain that parrots back Michael's arguments in her own voice. Eve can't bear to live in this sort of silent complicity, though, not when her little girl still lives in such a valence of constant fear, not when ignoring the wrongdoing of the RPF will continue to mean that Ed's death counted for nothing.
"Heard you were leaving," Eunice says one evening, stopping by Eve's.
The living room is half packed up in boxes, but Eunice makes herself comfortable on the sofa, and Eve soon finds herself telling Eunice everything, her voice shaking with barely contained emotion.
"I'm not even that angry with Michael," Eve concludes. "Or, I am, but not as angry as I could be, at least."
"He loves fighting the good fight as much as you do," Eunice agrees. "I'm sure he would've pushed harder, if he thought there was any chance of it helping. Really, the problem is that it's just a totally shitty situation, through and through."
"That, it is," Eve agrees, and Eunice puts a sympathetic arm around her shoulder.
Kate by now is accustomed to unfamiliar adults appearing in the living room at all odd hours of the night, but since Eunice is new and apparently a good enough friend to give hugs, she wanders out into the living room to say hello. Within a few minutes, she's sitting in front of Eunice on the sofa as Eunice does Kate's hair.
"And how do you feel about going back to London, Kate?" Eunice asks. "It's pretty far away from Kigali or Arusha! Are you excited?"
"Eve says some of London actually looks like Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane!" Kate answers eagerly. "Not where she lives, though, which is also where I'm going to live. London is filled with abazungu who are firefighters and people who sell balloons, and we can have adventures there like Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat!"
"I see." Eunice shoots Eve a bemused look over Kate's head. "Well, I'm glad you're excited. It can be scary, making a big move like this, and I'm glad you're not scared."
"No," Kate confirms. "Eve always makes the scary things go away. If I go to London with her, everything will be all right." She takes advantage of Eunice's momentarily loose grip on her hair to turn her head. "Will you come visit?"
"With all your spare time," Eve adds glibly.
"Sure, sweetheart," Eunice promises Kate. "I've never been to London. I'd love to come visit." As she goes back to doing Kate's hair, Eunice adds to Eve, "And yeah, I meant to mention earlier, I'm leaving field-officer work. I'll miss it, but I've just about burned out. A nice, boring research job at a desk sounds like just what I need right now."
"So you're going back to Washington?"
"Yup. Flying back tomorrow, actually. Thought I'd come see how things were going in Arusha, on my way out." She puts a final band in Kate's hair and pats Kate once on the back, and Kate rushes off to the bathroom to admire her reflection. "It's good to see that things are going so well between the two of you."
"Nice to see I'm not bollocksing absolutely everything up," Eve agrees with a pained laugh. She watches as Eunice begins putting away the extra hair ties, her nimble fingers long-practised in playing beauty parlour with cousins and friends who have hair like Kate's. "You'd tell me, though, if I were?"
"Yeah, of course." Eunice pauses and glances up at Eve. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Eve, it's not easy growing up Black in a majority-white country, especially when even the people who love you most don't really understand. And I know you know that. I guess the best I can tell you is to keep being self-critical. But, at the same time, keep being willing to forgive yourself for the mistakes you're inevitably going to make. It's a learning process, and as long as you stay open to learning, you can't fault yourself too much."
But Eunice's words stay with Eve through the final days of packing and paperwork. As she lets Kate read to her, Eve wonders how much she really is the Man in the Yellow Hat, whether it's right for her to whisk Kate off to London from the familiarity of Africa before the child is old enough to understand what it might mean or to fully consent. She takes in the comforting weight of Kate's body nestled within the crook of her arm, smells the familiar whiff of Kate's shampoo, listens to Kate's clear voice half-recite the words she knows by heart from the pages of her book. And Eve suddenly realises that, even if it's completely selfish, she would be devastated if Kate didn't stay with her.
"So we have to go sign some papers tomorrow," she explains to Kate, after the book has been placed on the bedside table and the light is turned off. "Once we do, it'll make me your legal guardian for immigration purposes, so we can go to London together."
Kate, half asleep, nods and curls up a bit more against Eve's side.
"And I..." Eve's voice catches, because even if she wanted to have this conversation, she's not sure how to make a seven-year-old understand. "I wanted to make sure you still wanted to come with me. You don't have to, you know."
"Yes, I do," Kate yawns. "You promised to be my new mama. And you can't be my mama, if we're not in the same place."
Eve finds herself quite unable to speak for a moment, so she simply wraps her arms around Kate a bit tighter and listens to her breathing, as if she could pour her overflowing love for her daughter through her arms and into the child herself. She thinks of the dim greyness of London, of the cold façades of stone buildings looming against a clouded white sky; of how different it is from the cities of this beautiful continent, where the colourful rooftops are framed by verdant mountains that brush the endless blue heavens. Eve has not set foot in a church in years, but she prays nonetheless that she is making the right choice for Kate—and that, if she is not, Kate will one day forgive her for it.
"Well, good," she whispers. "I'd miss you so much." After a moment, she adds, "Do you like being called 'Kate', by the way? Or do you want to be called something else, when they fill out the paperwork? We can ask them to put down something that you like better."
Kate wakes up a bit at this and wrinkles her nose.
"But it's my name," she reminds Eve, matter of fact, and Eve laughs.
"All right, then, Kate." Eve kisses Kate on the forehead, then pulls her arm from under her neck. "I... I hope you know that I love you very much."
"Love you, too, Mama," Kate murmurs as she drifts off to sleep.
Eve closes Kate's bedroom door and wanders into her own room to do some final packing. Ed's face smiles up at her from a framed photograph next to her bed, and Eve cradles it in her hands as she sits.
"You would have adored her," Eve whispers to the photograph. It suddenly occurs to her that, if Ed were here, he would tell her the exact same things as Eunice and not let her doubt for a second that adopting Kate was the right thing to do. She can almost hear his voice: So what, if Michael thinks the Nyamoya prosecution has to wait? She doesn't have to wait, for someone to take care of her. She shouldn't have to wait, for someone to take care of her! And Eve knows that, even if Michael was right about justice and love both taking time to build on strong foundations, she cannot and will not wait to love Kate as much as the girl deserves.
And so the papers are signed the following morning. The day after that, Michael waits with them until the car that will take Eve and Kate to Nairobi arrives; he hugs Eve goodbye and stands there waving until the car has disappeared, as he stays in Arusha to pursue the necessary but flawed work of the Tribunal. Kate presses her nose against the window as the plane taxis on the apron of Kenyatta International, then gasps as the engines whir and the plane surges forward and then lifts into the air, rising towards the clear blue sky. And Eve holds Kate's hand tightly as the earth falls away below them, the plane moving Kate farther and farther away from the only land she's ever known.
Eve returns to a London still holding its collective breath in the tense but quiet months since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Previous ceasefires with the IRA have exploded into further bloodshed, of course, but Eve has to pray that this one will actually hold. It would be too much, to take Kate from the horrors of her past in the comparative quiet of post-conflict Rwanda, straight into the infrequent but nonetheless bloody crossfire of the Troubles in London. Eve watches the nightly news with her lips pressed into a thin line, imagining her sister is watching a parallel newscast across the Irish Sea with a bitter scowl, trying not to let hope soar too high above her inherent scepticism, exhaling slowly as peace prevails.
For things are just as complicated as Eunice forecast, without the threat of random bombings lingering in the background of daily life. London thrills Kate at first, and her eyes widen in delight at the physical manifestation of the double-decker buses and red telephone boxes that she's only seen in her books. Eve takes Kate through the centre of the sprawling metropolis to all the well-known sites, glad for the excuse to play tourist in a city she hasn't inhabited for the past five years. But as the day wears on, Eve can see the realisation slowly settle on Kate, that although people who look like her certainly exist in London, she suddenly is different, an exception (albeit an unextraordinary one) in a way that she never was in Kigali or Arusha. The same awareness of her otherness once again descends upon Kate on her first day at school, and she grips Eve's hand so tightly when Eve arrives that afternoon that, at first, Eve is afraid that something has gone terribly wrong at school. No, Kate reassures her, everyone was nice, everyone was friendly, there's a boy in my class whose parents are from Zimbabwe and a girl who was born in Nigeria, but she remains withdrawn all through dinner, and Eve allows herself a good cry that night after Kate has gone to bed.
She supposes she's known, all along, that being Kate's mum in England would be different from being Kate's mum in Africa. Still, knowledge is one thing, and actually living through the adjustment process is another. And it's always easier when they're away from the rest of the world, spending time alone at home on the precious evenings that Eve isn't mired in work—just a parent and child, excitedly fitting together the final corner of a jigsaw puzzle, or planning out a weekend day trip into the countryside. In those moments, location and race and the judgements of others fall away, and Kate no longer needs to question how she fits into Eve's world; she carries herself with the absolute certainty that she is Eve's daughter, and that is more than enough.
Sometimes, Eve wonders how life might be different if she hadn't had an abortion, if Kate were growing up alongside a younger sibling who was closer to her in age and in skin tone. It's a ridiculous thought to even entertain, since there's no changing the past—and, since if Eve had had a baby, in all likelihood she wouldn't have been in Kigali to take Kate from Ed's arms. Still. Whenever she encounters parts of Kate that are closed off, guarded, too painful for even Kate herself to examine, Eve can't help but feel that it's her own fault, that Kate might be drawn out by someone more demonstrative than Eve. With a sibling, at least, Kate could have some sense of solidarity over all of Eve's late nights on the phone to various colleagues, over all of the midday school events missed because of court appearances and speaking engagements, over the lingering fear that Mum somehow loved justice more than anything (or anyone) else in the world.
And yet. Once, years ago, Eve convinced herself that when Ed looked at her and Kate on the helicopter pad, he saw the mother that Eve could have been to his child, if things had gone a bit differently. (They always spoke of trying again in the vague terms of 'after', bluntly ignoring the unending nature of the conflict, and Eve's rapidly ticking biological clock, and the heightened risk posed by the aftermath of her infection, and always the constant buzz of violence and death in the air.) Now, though, Eve chooses to believe that what Ed saw was the mother she might yet become to his child, to the girl who had never known him, but owed him her life nonetheless—this one last treasure Ed had given to Eve. And it feels right, to claim Kate as a daughter to them both, as thoroughly as Eve would any child born of her own body. She's never been good at public displays of affection, but not a day goes by that she doesn't think about Ed racing back across the helicopter landing pad, and how she said nothing to him when she should have said everything. So Eve learns to say 'I love you' whenever the thought strikes her, not just on special occasions or in the privacy of her own home; and she says it to Kate often, wholeheartedly, affectionately, to the point where Kate becomes embarrassed by it when she's old enough to mind the judgement of her peers. It isn't just that Eve fears that fate will separate them before their next meeting, although that anxiety is never far from her mind—it's more that Kate deserves more than Eve can ever give her, and even if Eve falls short as a mother, she can still give her darling daughter her love without reservation.
Time passes, and things don't exactly get easier, simply more familiar. Kate's terrifying nightmares never disappear completely, but the space between them stretches longer and longer in expanses of tentative relief, which her various therapists say is a good sign. Of course, into that void creep more mundane concerns, still made frightening and foreign by the parts of Kate that will forever remain unknowable to Eve. The afternoon when a school friend's rambunctious younger brother points a toy gun at Kate as he stampedes noisily through the room, and Eve has to come pick Kate up because Kate has shut down so completely that she can't even explain to her friend what's wrong. The day Kate begins menstruating and panics over the unexpected sight of so much of her own blood staining her clothes. The loneliness Kate feels when all the other girls in her class begin showing off their new curves in two-piece swimsuits that Kate cannot muster the courage to wear. The odd evening when Kate's class has been asked by some teacher to write papers on what their family heritage means to them, and Eve doesn't want to talk about Ireland any more than Kate wants to think about Rwanda; so the two sit in silence for a good five minutes before Eve asks if Kate wouldn't like to go out for some dinner, and halfway through a healthy serving of balti and paneer, Kate decides that she'll write her paper on the contemporary legacy of English colonialism. (She wins a prize for it, too. Eve, bursting with pride for her clever daughter, considers sending a copy of the award-winning paper to Sorcha, then decides that it's best not to fan the flames of some fires.)
Across the world, Eve's old friends begin to reappear in lofty places. Alice, to no one's surprise, rises through the murk of Rwandan politics with as much graceful ease as she had once risen through the ranks of the RPF, her signature calm charisma becoming her political trademark, her measured speeches becoming the stuff of internet sensation in her home country and beyond. Eunice, somewhat more surprisingly, manages to buck the stodginess of the US State Department's security-clearance system, and Eve smiles to see clips of the new Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs cheerfully challenging old white Congressmen on Africa policy in any number of hearings. Kate doesn't know these women, who were witness to her rescue and rebirth; but of course she knows Michael, who dotes on her like an uncle and patiently fields Kate's rants about Eve throughout her teenage years, whenever she drops by chambers in search of her mother after school. And then, before Eve knows it, her little girl is off to uni, an adult in her own right; and Eve accepts that at least now she won't feel guilty, working such late hours and coming home to an empty house. Kate has stayed in London, so they still see plenty of each other, and Eve makes sure that Kate knows that her childhood room will always be hers for the reclaiming, should the need arise.
The need doesn't arise until Kate is twenty-six, ostensibly living the life of a normal and completely self-sufficient young person in a bustling city. Everything is fine, until one day everything is not. Kate snaps, staggering under the weight of nightmares she's suppressed beyond bearing in her attempts at being normal—for herself, for her friends, for her mum especially. And it's all too familiar to Eve to sit by Kate's bedside in hospital, listening to the machines beep and the laboured wheezing of Kate's breath through the oxygen mask. Eve steeples her hands and wonders with an aching heart where she went wrong, why what she had to give wasn't enough to make Kate want to live, even as she knows from years of professional trainings and personal therapy that trauma strikes in unexpected and vicious ways, that she's done the best she can. This time, when Kate opens her eyes, she flinches backwards at the sight of Eve not out of fear, but out of shame; and Eve holds her beautiful, brave, broken daughter's hand as they both weep.
Eve knows that nothing could be more difficult than coaxing Kate from the horrors of the genocide back into the light, but she quickly finds that the challenges of helping her adult daughter regain her footing are multitude. Over her adolescence, Kate developed a barbed wit that delights Michael to no end and more often than not leaves Eve shaking her head in bemusement. Now, however, Kate turns her caustic sharpness on her mother, bitterly arguing that it would have been best if Ed Holt had left her in that orphanage to die, saved everyone here the trouble of raising such a fuck-up. Even on Kate's worst days—when she lashes out at Eve that Eve isn't her real mother, that Eve is just some entitled white woman with a saviour complex, trying to assuage her guilt for how thoroughly her own people have destabilised modern Africa—Eve clenches her teeth and does her best to let the spattering insults simply slide off. Whenever Kate collapses in the midst of one of these tirades, drained of all energy, too exhausted to burn with anger bright enough to drown out her heartbreak, Eve simply folds Kate in her arms and holds her until Kate's sobs have subsided. And invariably, once Kate's anger has burnt itself out, there are the apologies, the ashamed whispers of, "Mama, I didn't mean it, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." Eve just smiles and nods, and pretends like it doesn't hurt for the person she loves most in the world to wound her, over and over. It's not Kate's fault, not entirely; and if anything stings especially viciously, it's because Eve sometimes spots a hideous grain of truth to Kate's accusations, before she can turn her face away.
The thing is, Eve knows that love is not connection—that one can love someone as fiercely as possible, and that all the love in the world can fall short if no connection is made with the recipient. Kate knows how much Eve loves her; and even in those painful moments when Kate tries her hardest to cut Eve with her words, Eve knows that Kate loves her back, that what's screaming out is the unending terror that haunts Kate's dreams and paralyses her into stillness. Still, there are days when Eve watches Kate from across the room, and despite the fact that her heart is nearly bursting with love for her daughter, Kate is all but a stranger who happens to live in the same house. Eve silently acknowledges the void that stretches between them, carved out by generations of anger and exploitation and trauma, and with a brave smile, she continues on and loves Kate without resentment.
Finally, though, it seems that things are improving for good. Kate starts getting out of bed of her own accord; the medications she's been prescribed seem to be helping greatly. Eve goes back to her normal hours in chambers, despite Michael's repeated insistence that Eve take all the time she needs. (He's had to spend his fair share of time away recently, too, travelling to Kigali when the accident first occurred, then standing an exhausted vigil at Hana's bedside when she was transferred from Kigali back to London. Eve suspects that, when Harper started arriving every morning at Hana's hospital room, Michael accepted being replaced once more by Jenny's new partner with equal parts resentment and relief.) And perhaps Michael understands Eve better than she understands herself, for he quickly offers Kate a job as a legal investigator; and Kate, who doesn't have a whole lot of other options, stops criticising her mother's work quite so harshly and quietly jumps aboard.
Things stabilise, for a time. Eve watches and breathes a sigh of relief as Kate's floundering for purpose steadies around her determination to do her job well, her diligent examination of the facts she's given and those she tracks down. And Eve holds her tongue as Kate begins an affair with Godwin, a married colleague, because who is Eve to critique the choices of someone who fears rejection as desperately as Kate, and has connected with someone in a way she so rarely dares to? A year goes by, then several months more. Eve's impulse to shield her beloved daughter from any and every harm gradually cedes some ground to the realisation that she'll need to start nudging Kate gently away, to make sure that Kate has the confidence to stand on her own two feet again, if Eve can't be there to support her. Kate makes exercise a staple of her routine, something to get herself out of bed early and exhaust any nightmares that might plague her; and Eve stops jerking awake whenever she hears the front door open and close in the mornings, as Kate leaves for her daily runs. Eve returns to her typical lecture schedule, finally confident that Kate will be fine if she's gone for a night or two outside of London. All seems well.
And then—finally, almost after she'd given up all hope that it ever would—the Nyamoya case lands on Eve's desk. And Eve remembers that in order to help Kate heal, she's going to have to hurt the darling girl she'd sworn to protect all those years ago, hurt her so deeply that perhaps the rift between her daughter and herself will never disappear.
It's late in Kigali when Kate's mobile rings. She rubs her forehead with her thumb, trying to ease away a knot of tension that's settled there over the several hours that she's been reviewing these files on the alleged misconduct of a judge, and she smiles when she sees the caller's name.
"Hey," she says, answering.
"Didn't know if you'd pick up," Michael replies, his delight at having reached Kate evident in his voice. "It's late in your part of the world."
"Yeah, well, justice never sleeps, or something like that," Kate sighs. "How're things in London?"
"Oh, messy as always." Kate doesn't need Michael to explain that this refers to his tenuous health, and to Hana's continued state of hovering between life and death, and to the unending dilemma of whether white barristers in the United Kingdom have any right prosecuting the warlords of sub-Saharan Africa. "Your mother's phone was just sent back here, from The Hague. They wanted to hold it in evidence, in case it could be useful in their investigation into the assassinations. But they've pulled the forensics, to see if anyone out of the ordinary had contacted her the day of, and no such luck. It looks like we may never know."
"Yeah," says Kate quietly, her fingers twisting the silver ring dangling at her neck.
Part of her wants to rail at the Dutch for failing to identify the killer, for not giving her the closure she needs on her mother's death. But another part of her knows it doesn't matter, anyway. Knowing might bring the assassin to justice, but knowing won't bring back Eve Ashby. And that's what hurts Kate most—perhaps justice was enough to fuel her mother through the loss of Ed Holt and the pain of loving a daughter so scarred by the past, but it's not enough for Kate, can never be enough. Not if it won't bring back her Mama, who rocked her gently in the darkest of nights when she woke screaming from nightmares, who skipped any number of meetings to cheer Kate on at various sporting events, whose dark eyes always glimmered with pride and love for Kate, even when Kate felt she was failing her mother on so many levels.
She opens her mouth to say something more to Michael, but her throat has clamped up. Kate suspects Michael's been holding back some lecture or another on not letting herself grieve properly, and she suspects he may be right about this unhealthy impulse, but Eve's death is still too raw and tender to examine closely. And so Kate soldiers on with her work in the Rwandan court system, and waits for her pain to simmer down enough that she can address the issue without it boiling over disastrously. Michael, to her relief, allows her a moment to recover and spares her the lecture, today.
"Are you planning to come back, sometime soon?"
Kate hears what Michael omits, the unspoken 'home' clipped out of his sentence. She's not sure how she feels about that, just as she's not sure when she'll be back in the UK, and she tells Michael as much on the latter point.
"Well, when you're back, let me know, please. It'd be good to see you."
"Of course," she replies, and means it.
"You'll always have a place here, Kate," Michael says warmly.
"I know," she answers. "And I'm glad. Thing is, though, I'm not sure if I can really come home to London, before I've come home properly here."
"Yeah," replies Michael gruffly. Kate knows he doesn't understand precisely what she means—she barely understands it herself, what it means to be a child of two worlds like she is—but she knows that Michael has witnessed enough of her saga to accept the unknowable. "Well, I'd thought about giving you this in person, but, for once, it's probably best that you learn the truth of the matter now rather than later. Check your email. And good luck over there."
He hangs up before Kate has a chance to say goodbye in return, and she immediately turns to her computer, knowing that whatever conversation they were just having will be continued there. In a minute, an email comes through from Michael. Attached are two PDFs, and when Kate clicks through, she sees that one is a mobile phone's call log, and the other is an app-generated graph of the phone's battery over time. From the second, Kate can see that her mum—who was always rubbish at keeping her phone charged properly—had her mobile die on her, just before she would have entered the courtroom at the ICC, judging by the timing. From the first, she can see that Eve had checked her messages only moments before her phone's battery ran out, a call to her voicemail that ran long enough to capture the frantic message that Kate had left there, as her infuriating, brilliant, self-righteous, beautiful, loving, brave mother rode away from their home for the last time.
It's me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mum. What I said was unforgivable. I'm sorry. I love you. Call me.
And now Kate can move forward with the certainty that Eve heard her apology; with the equal certainty that Eve had forgiven Kate already, because she always had, always, even at Kate's worst moments, even when Kate didn't deserve to be forgiven for her cutting words. And only now—when she has evidence that would hold up in court, when tears are rolling down her cheeks too fast for her to wipe them away—does it occur to Kate that she never needed this confirmation anyway. That, despite her anger and her harshness and her sense of piercing betrayal, she never truly doubted the steadfastness of her mother's love, or that of her own love for her mother. Or that either of them could ever mistake that love, however complicated and thorny and sometimes painful, for anything other than the fierce and mutual bond that it was. It doesn't matter that her mum's phone inopportunely died that fateful day, before she could call Kate, doesn't matter that Kate never heard Eve's grace manifested in reassurances. Eve Ashby loved Kate and forgave Kate and fought for Kate, every single moment of her life since Kate first came into it, and Kate has always known this.
London no longer feels precisely like home, not after everything Kate's been forced to relive; everything feels shifted a few inches off-centre from where it stood before the Nyamoya case. Kigali, by contrast, still feels like a strange land that nevertheless pulses with uncanny familiarity. Yet Kate knows, somewhere at her core, that whether in Kigali or Arusha or London, or anywhere in between, home for Kate has always been Eve. And maybe that's enough to ground her, even in Eve's absence.
Silently, Kate presses her mother's ring to her lips, a continuing farewell to the woman who made her who she is today. Once her breathing has slowed down a bit, she taps out a reply to Michael: You told me then that she already knew, and you were right. But thank you for this. And then Kate stretches her arms above her head, peers out the window at the crescent moon twinkling in a sky slightly hazy with light pollution, and takes a long moment to be grateful for Eve. Eve, who was not her mother, but was so much more. Eve, who only ever wanted to give her daughter back her memory, and whose memory Kate would one day be able to cherish without feeling so keenly the edge of loss.
But, for now, the work remains, of rebuilding Rwanda stone by stone, file by file, story by story. Eve gave her own life to ensure that Kate would be reunited with her past. And so Kate returns to work, quietly determined to forge her future into one that would make her mother proud.