Page 28 of Grave Danger
“I won’t lie to you,” said Jack. “It makes the case harder.”
“Because of the politics?”
Proving Ava’s death was something Jack was hoping to keep out of the Hague Convention proceeding, and not because he was trying to accommodate the State Department’s concerns—or Andie’s.
“Not just politics,” he said. “Under the law, it’s not easy to prove that a missing person is dead. In fact, until a person has been missing for seven years, the legal presumption is that she isnotdead.”
“So this actually helps Farid’s case,” she said, thinking aloud. “He’s not trying to prove that Ava is alive just to make the Iranian government happy.”
“Maybe a little of both.”
“What do we do?” Zahra asked.
“We prove that your sister was murdered by the Iranian government.”
“With or without the help of the US government?”
“Yes,” said Jack.
She blinked, confused. “No, I’m asking: Will the US government help us prove that my sister is dead, or will they not?”
“And I’m giving you the best answer I can,” said Jack, his gaze drifting toward the crowd on the other side of the rail. “We will prove it. With the US government’s help. Or without it.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” said Jack, knowing that either way, he wouldn’t make any friends in Washington.
Or at home.
Chapter 10
Andie was chopping carrots at the kitchen counter, preparing beef stew for dinner, when a news alert lit up her cell phone. She normally ignored breaking news, as it rarely even qualified as “news,” let alone “breaking.” But this one caught her eye:child custody battle in miami courtroom reignites us-iran tension over missing mother.
Jack was still at work, so it was truly breaking news for Andie. She laid her cutting knife aside and opened the app.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
Righley was at the other end of the kitchen counter, doing homework. It hadn’t been Andie’s intention to telegraph her reaction, but Righley was getting to the age at which daughters read something into a mother’s every facial expression.
“It’s nothing,” said Andie, but she read on, skimming to glean the essential facts. The medical examiner’s testimony about no death certificate. Judge Carlton’s 5:00 p.m. ruling that adoption requires the consent of both biological parents, if living. Jack’s statement to the media outside the courthouse, which played on a video loop without any prompting from Andie: “Sadly, in order to keep her daughter from being taken away from her, my client must now prove that her sister Ava is deceased—murdered at the hands of the Iranian morality police, like so many other innocent victims of this oppressive regime.”
“That’s Daddy!” said Righley. “Is he on the news?”
“Apparently so.”
“Is that why he’s working late again?”
Andie scraped the chopped carrots into the bowl with the other veggies. “He’s very busy.”
“Do you miss him?”
The question took Andie by surprise. “What?”
“When he doesn’t come home for dinner and stuff—does that make you sad?”
Andie remembered a time, early in their marriage, when dinner together was a priority, something to look forward to. They could talk about things as big as their future together or as small as their day at work. That was before they invoked the Rule, and their marriage became more like a Wall Street law firm or an investment bank, the bounds of their conversations constrained by information barriers and walls of confidentiality.
“All right, missy. Are you a third grader or a psychiatrist? Finish your homework.”