I shook the whole way to the courthouse. New hives seemed to appear at every turn of the van.
The holding cage at the courthouse felt like a brick oven. I could hear Raffaele fidgeting on the other side of the thick wall. A couple of times he asked if I was all right.
"Yes," I said, my voice weak. My chest hurt. I was shivering uncontrollably. Violently, as if I had a fever of 105. I tried to take deep breaths. It didn"t work.
The guard holding my arm was a tall, st.u.r.dy blonde who wore baby-blue eye shadow to match her light blue uniform. I whimpered like a child as we headed upstairs. "Shh, shh," she said. "It"s okay."
Ashley and Delaney were standing by the courtroom door, just as they had at the end of the first trial. The blond agente and a young ponytailed brunette half-pulled me inside. I wasn"t ready to face the decision.
The courtroom had the feel of a carnival put on mute-an electric, unnatural silence emanated from so many varied bodies. The journalists were allowed to film the reading of the verdict, so there were flashing still cameras and TV cameras. Some journalists had hoisted themselves up on tall stands erected for this moment.
I didn"t see Meredith"s family coming in. I saw my family standing alert against the fence that ordinarily separated the journalists from the rest of the courtroom. They were smiling at me, but I could see the strain on their faces. I tried to smile back, but my face had frozen. I was pushed between my lawyers, who put their arms around me and tried to calm me. "Are you cold?" Luciano asked. He rubbed my shoulders, pulling me against him.
I didn"t want the judges and jury to come out.
I didn"t want to hear their words. I was too afraid they would condemn me.
The court secretary announced, "La corte!" and the court filed into position. The jury members looked steadily ahead, expressionless. Judge h.e.l.lmann began reading aloud. He started with the letter F, the charge for slander. I was p.r.o.nounced guilty, and my sentence was raised from one year to three-time I"d already served.
I tried to hold off the terrible resurgence of fear that I"d be convicted on all charges. I had to focus to remember that I could be convicted for slander and not for murder, and I strained against the feeling of drowning until I knew what was coming.
People started muttering behind me, turning my nerves up another notch.
"For the charges prescribed in letters A, B, C, D, and E," Judge h.e.l.lmann continued, "La corte a.s.solve gli imputati, per non aver commesso i fatti"-"the defendants are acquitted by the court, for not having committed the acts."
I"d been struggling for four years to reach the surface of the water. That first gasp of air was deep, heavy, sudden, and painful. But it was breath. It was life. It was freedom.
The crowd cheered. Some booed.
In the seconds before the guards rushed me out of the courtroom, Carlo, Luciano, and Maria hugged me. Then, in one step, I was out, down the stairs, crying, propelled by the guards, who guided my steps.
Waiting downstairs, I was still crying. Raffaele held my hand, saying, "But Amanda! It"s okay! We"re going home!"
One of the guards winked. "You"ve done well, little girl," he said. "You won me my bet!"
Just before we were taken outside, I embraced Raffaele. "I"ll come see you in Seattle," he said.
The guards helped me into the backseat of a regular police car. I buckled myself in and looked out the windows at the trees and cars lining the street. It was dark, but I wanted to see everything-just to see them-because I could. We raced through Perugia and into the countryside, sirens blaring-just like when I"d been taken to the prison the first time. This time I didn"t have my head down between my knees. This time the guards were smiling at me.
At Capanne, the paperwork had already come through from the courthouse. "It"s time to go," the guards said. "Run upstairs quickly and grab your things. Now. Run."
I ran through the hallway alone, up the stairs to the locked gate. As soon as I called out, "Agente!" for the guard to let me in, the hallway erupted in cheers. Women crowded in front of their gates to see me, thrusting their arms through the bars to touch me, to say good-bye. I touched their hands, a pa.s.sing marathon runner.
Irina was at our cell door crying. We hugged. "Take care of yourself," I said.
I picked up my bag, walked out of my cell for the last time, and ran back down the hall to shouts of "Amanda, Amanda. Liberta! Liberta! Liberta!"
Guards took me to the center building and gave me back my pa.s.sport and money. I didn"t recognize my pa.s.sport photo. It was a younger me, taken just before I"d left for Italy, before any of this had happened, a picture of the Amanda who"d left Seattle in a rush, excited to be in a new place, to discover herself as an adult in a new culture. I felt sad to see her. I wanted to say, "You have no idea what"s going to happen to you. I want to protect you."
I was handed a baggie with the earrings that guards had confiscated when I got to Capanne. The holes in my ears, new when I went to prison, had long since closed up.
Rocco and Corrado had caught up to me.
It was all happening so fast.
They hugged me, teary-eyed, saying, "We"re going to get you out." They handed me a new iPhone, still in the box. I"d never seen one. "Use this to call us," Rocco said.
My stomach was turning over and over, my face hurt from smiling. My heart hurt from beating so hard. I was out! I was free! I was so overwhelmed, I couldn"t talk. I hurt with joy.
I came out the same door I"d gone through four years before. I remembered to brush my right foot against the ground, the prison ritual to pa.s.s on freedom to another prisoner. Comandante Fulvio smiled and shook my hand. Prisoners erupted in cheers, banging pots and pans and waving T-shirts and towels through the bars of their windows, screaming, "AMANDA! LIBERTa! E vaiiiiiiiiii! LIBERTa! AMANDA! VAI A CASA! LIBERTa! Yaaaay! Freedom! Amanda! You"re going home!"
I was free.
I was going home.
Epilogue
October 34, 2011
Corrado got into the backseat of a black Mercedes with tinted windows and leather seats while I hugged Rocco for the last time. He would be staying behind with Comandante Fulvio. "Thank you for all you"ve done," I told him, my heart racing. Everything was in a rush.
"Go on. Go on," he said. "Call me later." He winked.
I got into the backseat of the car and shook the hand of the uniformed driver, a polite and quiet young man who couldn"t have been much older than I was. "What"s happening now?" I asked Corrado.
The driver started the car and pulled it to the gateway while Corrado quickly explained the plan. "Your family is waiting outside the gate. They"ll follow us to Rome. We"ll pick up your mom along the way. Once in Rome, we"ll drop you off at a safe house for the night. You"ll be flying home tomorrow!"
I wasn"t prepared for the scene outside the car window as we crawled out of the gate. The driver pushed us through, but we were met with a wall of cameras and people. It was so dark out that I could see only from the flashes of the cameras-journalists surrounding the car, faces practically pressing against the gla.s.s. I automatically ducked my head, an instinct I had developed.
Once past the horde of journalists, the driver hit the gas and we took off down the road and into the countryside, in the opposite direction of Perugia"s city center. I had never turned left going out on that road before, and only had a vague understanding that we were heading west-ish-I wouldn"t be able to see it in the darkness, but I knew we were pa.s.sing a hill on top of which was a farmhouse I had often seen during the past four years.
We were driving as quickly as possible, zooming down the curving streets as if in a high-speed chase. I looked behind me and saw a line of cars zooming after us. It was a high-speed chase. There were journalists, paparazzi. "You said we were going to pick up Mom along the way?" I asked Corrado incredulously. How could we go anywhere without being swarmed?
"Your mother should be in the car following immediately behind us," Corrado explained. "Our driver will try to lose these journalists and find a quiet spot to pull up and for her to get in."
Mom! I thought. I looked back again and saw the headlights of the car close behind us, leading the string.
"They"re right on us," the driver said, referring to the journalists. He turned off the headlights so they would have a harder time seeing us, and we started taking fast turns off the road, circling. I couldn"t see anything from the window. We had to do this maneuver a few times before we found a quiet, deserted patch of gravel, and the car that had been on our tail, headlights turned off as well, growled to an idling halt beside us.
I opened the door, and Mom hurtled into the seat next to me, so I ended up in the middle between her and Corrado. She was frazzled, but it took her only a split second before she burst into tears and embraced me. In the meantime, another figure hustled into the front pa.s.senger seat, the doors closed, and we were off again, kicking up gravel. The car Mom had gotten out of similarly sped off behind us.
"My baby! My baby!" Mom gushed, and groped my head and shoulders. I buried my face in her neck, almost unbelieving that she was there, that she was in a car with me, that we were racing out of Perugia, racing toward Rome. The driver turned the headlights back on, and we were soon spotted again by journalists chasing us. The car Mom had gotten out of, which she said was being driven by Chris, was meanwhile zigzagging across the length of the already narrow road behind us, trying to keep journalists from getting around him and near our car. At a certain point, Chris told me later, he was even rammed from behind.
The figure in the front seat of our car finished strategizing with the driver and then turned around in his seat. "Hi. I"m Steve Moore." He shook my hand and smiled. "We can get to the pleasantries later." He turned back around and kept an eye on the road as we roared down the streets, eventually merging onto the highway. He must have been around my mom"s age, and had the build of a retired baseball player-strong, padded. He was actually a retired FBI agent who had presumed me guilty until he looked into the case at the urging of his wife. As a result, he became an advocate for my defense in the United States, and wrote online about the evidence from a professional investigator"s perspective, criticizing the prosecution"s claims and explaining why they were wrong. He had written to me in prison, and I had written him back to provide ideas for the name of his daughter"s new pet pig-my favorite idea, even if it was obvious, was inevitably Hamlet.