Page 122 of The Right to Remain

“No. It was ongoing.”

“Ongoingand escalatingover time. A fair statement?”

“Fair, I suppose.”

“And the morning you ran from the house—that wasn’t the first time your husband acted in a way that made you fear for your own safety, was it?”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘safety.’”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Ms. Pollard. The truth is, you were keeping a secret from your husband, weren’t you?”

She bristled at the accusation, but she didn’t deny it. “Excuse me?”

“You created a social media campaign for your son Austen.”

“Oh, that,” she said, as if relieved to concede that much. “Yes.”

“You put images of your six-year-old dancer in leotards on social media for public consumption, and you didn’t tell your husband. Isn’t that true?”

Helena seemed to be looking past Jack, into the gallery behind him, as if to seek reassurance from her lawyer. Then she answered. “I was trying to help Austen.”

“Your social media campaign didn’t turn out to be so ‘helpful,’ did it, Ms. Pollard?”

She struggled for words. “It—yes, there were some problems.”

“Serious problems, right? As it turned out, most of your son’s social media followers were grown men. Some were known pedophiles.”

Helena became defensive, her hands balling into tight fists on her lap. “That was bad. Really bad.”

“You feared Owen would find out, didn’t you?”

“You need to understand. Owen was not a bad person. He was in a bad place.”

“And while he was in such a bad place, you were afraid of what he mightdowhen he found out. So afraid that you started carrying that gun in your purse. True?”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Let’s be clear about whose idea it was,” said Jack. “C. J. Vandermeer gave you that gun, didn’t he?”

Again, Helena’s gaze drifted beyond Jack, in the direction of her lawyer, and then she answered. “Yes. CJ gave me the gun. For protection.”

“Protectionfrom your husband, correct?”

“That’s what he told me, yes.”

“Mr. Vandermeer feared that your husband would physically hurt you if he found out that grown men—sexual predators—were looking at pictures of his son online. Right?”

“Objection,” said the prosecutor. “Mr. Vandermeer is not on trial here.”

“Overruled,” the judge said quickly, barely taking the time to think about it. “The witness may answer.”

Another nervous glance to somewhere beyond Jack, and then she answered: “CJ was afraid for both of us—him and me.”

“Afraid for both of you because he helped with the social media campaign, didn’t he, Ms. Pollard?”

“Yes. But you’re missing the point.”

She was in obvious discomfort, but so far, she’d admitted the truth of everything CJ had said, which fueled Jack’s confidence. His cadence quickened, her answers irrelevant, his questions mere assertions of fact in rapid-fire delivery.