I knew he was cracking jokes to try and cheer me up. Or maybe he thought I was ungrateful for what he’d done for me—which was a lot. I reached out and took his hand. “Thank you, I so appreciate what you did for me. But now I need to find a way to pay it forward. I’m thinking volunteer work. And when I get my bonus for the year, I’ll donate it to a legal relief fund or civil liberties union.”
He tilted his head at me. “Or you can help me decide which charities we can send my trust fund money to. That wasn’t just a parting shot at my father. I was serious. I don’t want that money.”
He almost took my breath away. I needed a moment to recover. “You would do that?”
“Yes. I agree with you. We should help where we can. Why don’t we ask Jenna her opinion on what to do? Doesn’t she work at a refugee center? I bet she’d know where monetary help was needed.”
I stood up, bent and hugged him. “Those are great ideas. Thank you.”
He reached up and stiffly patted my arm as I hugged him, clearly uncomfortable. I hesitated. It was obvious that being back at the house after our weekend away was weirding him out.
We’d been in each other’s company constantly over the past four days. Perhaps he needed his space. I pulled away, ready to back off and maybe go lock myself in my gaming room for a while to get over this weird funk I was feeling.
As I did so, however, he caught my wrist and held me in place. “You didn’t look at all your mail.”
I glanced down at the table to see no less than three identical envelopes in the same bone-colored fancy linen stationary. I recognized them instantly. They were from my brother’s lawyer. Wow, they were getting more prolific in their mailings.
“I’ll run them through the shredder.” I sighed.
“I think you should have a look at them first. I’m worried, now that I know what exactly you’re facing up there… I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to just ignore it. What if they decide to contact the U.S. government and threaten your green card?”
I blinked, feeling another weight drop. Lucas’s conclusion that these same people might be responsible for my troubles with U.S. immigration had me thinking. If that was the case, they wouldn’t be above trying to get my newly won green card revoked, either.
I immediately slumped back into my seat, feeling like a tire that had just lost all its air. He was right.
I leaned forward, rubbing my forehead. The mere thought of doing anything about this exhausted me.
“When you get your green card, you’ll be able to leave the country and get back in with no problem.” He stated what I already knew. “What is your plan, Kat? Are you just never going to go back to Canada again?”
Without another word, I scooted the letters into a pile in front of me and began to systematically tear them open and read through them. As I read a letter, I handed it to Lucas, then tore into the next one while he read the previous one. After the third one, I sat back, feeling more exhausted than before. Each one got more insistent. The last one stating that the Crown counsel had been given my address and other information. I would shortly be subpoenaed for an examination of discovery, if I hadn’t already.
Lucas shook his head, squinting at the last letter, then picking up the one before it to skim again. “I’m not understanding these Canadian legal terms. Crown counsel? Examination of discovery?”
I licked my lips. “Well, I’m no expert on the American system but I did binge watch The Good Wife last year. A Crown counsel is what you call the prosecutor in the States. An examination of discovery is called a deposition here.”
“So…”
“The Crown counsel wants to know if I’m a viable witness for the defense. And if I am, they want to know what I know for when they cross-examine me in a trial.”
He stared at me. “But you know and I know that you’re not a witness for the defense. You have no idea where he was.”
I bit my top lip and locked my arms across my chest tightly. “Correct.”
“So if you go there, and you tell them this, then they’ll be off your back about it.”