Unbroken Threads Read online

  UNBROKEN THREADS

  JENNIFER KLEPPER

  Unbroken Threads

  Red Adept Publishing, LLC

  104 Bugenfield Court

  Garner, NC 27529

  http://RedAdeptPublishing.com/

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Klepper. All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: July 2018

  Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE | AMINA

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT | AMINA

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE | AMINA

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN | AMINA

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | AMINA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | AMINA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT | AMINA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY | AMINA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX | AMINA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE | AMINA

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE | AMINA

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE | AMINA

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To mothers and grandmothers.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Are you Jessica?” The receptionist placed the phone receiver on her shoulder and pulled a folder from the top of a pile on her desk. “Leslie isn’t here today. Here’s the case file. You can go ahead to the meeting room. I’ll bring the client over.” She motioned toward a room to the right of the legal clinic entrance as she handed over a manila folder.

  Before Jessica could follow up with any questions about how in the world she was supposed to do this without a staff attorney, the woman resumed her phone conversation, speaking in a language Jessica didn’t understand.

  Jessica smiled hesitantly at the two Hispanic women sitting in the metal chairs by the social services pamphlets. Children played at the women’s feet, silently pushing plastic cars and buses along the curved lines woven into the faded carpeting. Pale curtains framed the empty street visible through the security bars on the window, but the waiting room was otherwise unadorned.

  The meeting room wasn’t much better, and it certainly wasn’t like the conference rooms at Highland & Cross, with their shiny, inlaid mahogany tables and original American artwork. But the International Asylum Project wasn’t a high-powered DC law firm, and nonprofits took what they could get. Here, in a sketchy part of Baltimore, that meant a wood laminate table with mismatched chairs, flat white paint on the walls, and patriotic stock photos mounted in cheap plastic frames.

  The legal clinic clearly had money for the electric bills, though. Jessica shivered at the air conditioning, glad she’d worn her new jacket. She hadn’t practiced law since her sixth grader was a toddler, and she didn’t even know how to look the part anymore. Somewhat jokingly, but somewhat not, she had referred to television legal dramas for sartorial inspiration before heading to Nordstrom to buy some updated professional attire.

  Today’s cropped houndstooth jacket and flare-legged trousers were perhaps a little stiff for IAP, but they conveyed the confidence she needed in taking on something completely out of her comfort zone.

  Jessica pulled a wheeled chair away from the table, cursing when she twisted her ankle and stumbled, the chair sliding away in the process. The four-inch heels might have been too much.

  After straightening the chair, Jessica reached into her pocket and pulled out one of her new business cards for reassurance. Jessica Walter Donnelly, Attorney. IAP didn’t provide cards for its volunteers, but Danny had surprised her with a stack when she’d finished the training. A good catch, that sailor boy.

  Despite having taken on this volunteer position somewhat reluctantly—entirely reluctantly, to be honest—she’d had butterflies, the good kind, about it. Sure, she already had a full résumé of volunteer roles, but this one had more substance and would be more impressive than the others. She was in a suit, after all. Today should have been an opportunity to show off her admittedly rusty professional skills to the staff attorney, who was ten years her junior, but who was counting?

  Unfortunately, a shiny rectangle of paper and a new suit weren’t going to help make up for the fact that her supervisor hadn’t shown up for her first client meeting or that the pro bono attorney training had been on the light side. Maybe the receptionist would be tied up on the phone for a while longer and Jessica could cram in a quick review of the file. She opened the folder to the client information sheet, and her stomach dropped.

  Name: Amina Hamid

  Gender: Female

  Date of Birth: 07/20/1989

  Languages: Arabic, English, French

  Country of Origin: Syria

  Syria. As in red lines and barrel bombs, ISIS and beheadings, terror and jihad.

  She had expected to be sitting there with a staff attorney, maybe an interpreter, and a client like one of the women or children in the waiting room, not a Muslim woman from the Middle East. Though maybe she wasn’t Muslim. Jessica scolded herself. That shouldn’t matter. She had never thought of herself as prejudiced. In fact, taking this pro bono position to help immigrants should have been proof she wasn’t. But in the pit of her stomach, she felt otherwise, and it felt ugly. She shook off the unexpected sense of dread, marking it up to nerves, and flipped to the next page.

  A knock interrupted the cram session too soon. Turning toward the door, Jessica caught her warped reflection in an eagle-adorned photo and smoothed her auburn waves, which had been caught off guard by an unseasonal autumn humidity.

  As the receptionist walked away, closing the door behind her, Jessica gestured toward the table, inviting the client to sit. The woman stood significantly shorter than Jessica, even accounting for the new heels. Her slate, long-sleeved blouse, matching wrap, and flowing black maxi skirt accented her petite stature.

  A plum scarf, expertly draped around the woman’s head and neck, framed her f
ace. She would certainly stand out in Baltimore. Being so conspicuous in a new country had to be uncomfortable. Thank God Jessica hadn’t gone with the sexy TV lawyer look Danny had advocated. The contrast with the demure Muslim attire would have been embarrassing.

  The woman had an unnerving stillness about her. Jessica had never spoken with a woman in a hijab before. She had of course seen countless photos of Muslim women in headscarves. In her mind, the photos showed a sea of sameness—masses of women subjugated into hiding themselves away from the world and homogenizing their appearance.

  Jessica reassessed. The woman sitting across from her, small and shrouded in her traditional clothing, seemed more striking because of it. The headscarf hid the woman’s hair and ears, but it served as a bold frame that highlighted her features.

  The tenseness of her brow formed three vertical lines between her eyebrows. The lines still had that woman-in-her-twenties transience, but they looked as if they had been invited to stay too long and might take up permanent residence. The eyebrows themselves turned up slightly at their inside ends, betraying sadness, but they were perched above piercing black eyes that undeniably screamed “don’t fuck with me.”

  Hoping to break the ice, Jessica forced a sorority-rush smile and introduced herself. “First of all, I want to say that I just received your case file when I walked in the door, so I haven’t been able to go through all of the particulars at this point. You don’t need an interpreter, though, correct?”

  The woman answered with a curt nod. Stillness. It wasn’t serene, placid stillness but more like the stillness of a lioness calculating when to pounce on a gazelle. Or perhaps it was the stillness of an injured lioness calculating how to protect herself against an attack.

  “What can you tell me about your case?” Jessica deflected her eyes and paged through the paperwork. “It looks like you’ve already filed your application for asylum.” Jessica would have expected to be preparing that application right now, not backfilling it.

  “Yes, I hired a lawyer to prepare my original paperwork. He was very expensive but said I would have no problems. When I read the application he prepared, the information was wrong.” Amina spoke with a crispness—each hard consonant taut and deliberate—that made each word sound considered. The accent was distinct, but it didn’t overpower the woman’s English.

  Jessica fought the urge to shift in her seat. “What do you mean by ‘wrong’?”

  “What it said happened to me was incorrect. What it said happened to my family was incorrect. He told me what he wrote was the way to get approved, that he knew the stories that worked. I did not trust him. He was only doing things for the money. But I had already paid him and had no money for a new lawyer. So I completed my application myself and submitted it.” Amina’s stiff monotone delivery betrayed an anger that hadn’t subsided. Her narrowed eyes remained fixed on Jessica.

  Jessica felt a bit like a gazelle, still hesitant to move. She really did hate lawyers sometimes, and stories like Amina’s were why. The industry of nonattorney notarios and even licensed lawyers preying on immigrants and submitting fraudulent paperwork, or no paperwork at all, was hard to police since the victims were reluctant to draw attention to themselves by reporting the crimes.

  But Jessica represented the good-guy attorneys. And Amina was clearly no pushover. She had to have uncommon confidence to take back an application from a lawyer in a foreign country. So much for the stereotypical submissive Middle Eastern woman.

  “IAP is different.” Jessica crafted what she hoped was a sincere, reassuring expression and decided not to mention that the staff attorney who was supposed to be there to lead the case had bailed out that morning. That wouldn’t inspire confidence. “I’m a volunteer. I’m not doing this for the money—any money, really.” She turned up her palms reflexively. Hopefully, this fact would allay any fears Amina might have that she was going to get screwed again.

  Amina raised her chin slightly. “Then why are you doing this?”

  Because I would have come off as selfish and uncaring if I had turned down the IAP director? That response didn’t seem likely to engender trust.

  “You deserve someone to help you gain asylum. I have the skills to help you.” The nonanswer followed by what was possibly a nontruth left Jessica’s mouth dry.

  Amina relaxed—just a bit. The lines between her eyebrows disappeared, but her eyes narrowed, pulling a lone freckle below her left eye upward ever so slightly. “How many asylum cases have you won?”

  Shit. Keeping her shoulders squared and her eyes steady, Jessica responded without hesitation. “None.” She hastened to add, “But I haven’t lost any, either. I’ll be working with a staff attorney here at IAP, so I’ll have access to all of the help I need.” The new suit had better be conveying some confidence because that was about all she had going for her right now.

  Amina stared at Jessica without breaking eye contact. Jessica willed herself to exude competence.

  She clearly needed to work on her exuding. Amina stood abruptly, clutching her bag and appearing taller than when she’d entered. “This was a mistake. My cousin wished that I would come here, and so I did. I can do this myself. Thank you for your time.”

  Jessica rose from her own chair. Before she could get any words out, Amina had turned away from her.

  Jessica spoke anyway, her words scrambling over each other in an attempt to beat Amina to the door. “I can assure you that we have the resources to provide you the best assistance so you are prepared for the rest of the asylum process.” She hadn’t been able to read through the application, so she couldn’t call out anything in particular that Amina definitely needed help with from an attorney.

  Amina pivoted, the steadiness and determination in her voice adding a bulk to her stature that layers of clothing did not. “I already had a lawyer who almost destroyed my chances. I will succeed or fail on my own. That is best. Again, thank you for your time.”

  The door closed softly behind Amina, leaving Jessica standing in a cold white room with crappy furniture, holding a single business card out to no one.

  AFTER FIRING UP HER Audi, Jessica flipped over to the eighties station, hoping some nostalgic tunes might trick her into a better mood on the drive back to Annapolis. But her mind reeled with internal debate and analysis, and the New Wave music couldn’t compete.

  Thank God there had been no witnesses in that cold room. No one had ever doubted her abilities before, and now two people had: a Syrian woman who didn’t even know her and, worse, Jessica herself.

  Maybe she’d waited too long to go back to something substantial. All those PTA and community do-gooder jobs had kept her busy and showed she cared, but they hadn’t kept her sharp. As a result, a woman had just rejected her offer of free legal assistance. A Muslim woman seeking asylum from a war-torn nation had rejected her help. And yet a rush of relief hit Jessica when Amina had walked out that door. Maybe it was all for the best, considering Jessica hadn’t exactly sought out the role to begin with.

  Months before, Jessica had run into the IAP director at a law school alumni gathering. She and Rosalie had stayed in touch since graduating from law school, but the relationship had diminished to Christmas cards and an occasional shout-out on social media. Rosalie had forwarded the alumni event invitation, urging Jessica to come to an event “just this once.” Danny’s business travel and late nights had picked up considerably, a hazard of success in the booming cybersecurity industry, so Jessica had taken advantage of the opportunity to mingle with some fellow alums.

  She hadn’t been to a networking-style event since she’d left her firm, and she’d found the private bar teeming with attorneys to be a hedonistic throwback to those law firm days. The receding hairlines in expensive suits were opportunities to upgrade from a current law firm or government agency to a new and better-paying opportunity. The bright eyes taking advantage of the sponsored buffet were a reminder of the rush she’d received from those big post–law school paychecks before t
he reality of houses and kids and life had set in. But without a professional goal in mind, it was hard to mix at those sort of networking events, and Jessica had found herself at the open bar with Rosalie, who wasn’t looking to upgrade and had never desired the rush of a big paycheck.

  The “refugee situation” and the influx of unaccompanied minors from Latin America were pretty big in the news, so Jessica had politely inquired how Rosalie was handling the workload in her new role as IAP director.

  As Rosalie answered, Jessica’s mind had drifted, fascinated by the solid streak of gray that cut through Rosalie’s otherwise sensible bob. The spark of edginess contrasted with her practical department-store pantsuit. Rosalie got caught up in explaining the effects of immigration policies and global unrest on refugees in America, her words tumbling out with the rapidity of a teacher attempting to give as much of the lecture as possible before the bell rang.

  The “And what have you been up to?” caught Jessica mid-sip. Since leaving her corporate law position at Highland & Cross, with its name-droppable clients and prominent reputation, she hadn’t been able to give a solid answer to that question. Explaining what she’d been “up to” as a stay-at-home mom was even harder when talking with an impressively employed fellow grad. Kids, husband, school, house responsibilities, blah, blah, blah. Jessica had no grounded response even though she was quite busy, or at least had been until recently.

  As Jessica fumbled, Rosalie pounced. “You have to come to the IAP information session.” She placed her hand firmly on Jessica’s upper arm, as if readying to pull Jessica back to the IAP offices that very moment. “Our next introductory session for pro bono attorneys is next month, in fact. You don’t have to worry about doing a series of training sessions, just a couple up front. Then we assign you to a case with a staff attorney who can show you the ropes. Even though we’re overflowing with requests for assistance, our volunteers only have to carry one case. This helps with our volunteer attorneys who are working regular jobs, so in your case, you might find you can carry more than one.”