Did I want to go, with a guarantee now that the media would be out in force? Absolutely not. The thought of it had my stomach knotting. But Chris’s disillusioned, I thought you liked me, and How can you not come, followed by that look of hope on Grace’s face?
Who was I? I wasn’t a mother or a wife, and I was a daughter in name only. But I was a friend. Being a friend sometimes meant you left your own comfort zone for the sake of someone else. I wanted to be the kind of person who did that.
* * *
Grace texted me twice before seven. The first text told me to wear my purple herringbone tweed blazer. She had been with me when I bought it, and said that it was what was expected in court. I felt a stab of annoyance. I knew what was expected—God, did I. Since she didn’t know how cozy courtrooms and I had once been, her remark was innocent in that sense, but not so in another. She was making sure I knew I was coming. The second text sealed the deal. It said that the hearing was scheduled for ten, and that Jay was driving “us all” and would pick me up at eight.
8
The Federal Courthouse in Rutland was modest by big-city standards, but seeing it through the tinted windows of Jay’s back seat, knowing that I actually had to enter it, I felt a mild panic. The building was imposing. Standing three stories, it had tall, narrow windows, arched cornices, and double columns typical of the Italianate style. Red brick spanned its forehead, pale granite its mouth and cheeks. Built in 1869, Jay narrated, likely as a diversion, but no diversion could erase the media on the steps. They were clustered in the center of three sections marked by handrails. Alone near the top, positioned so that the backdrop would be the middle one of three massive doors, was Ben Zwick.
Grace swore.
So did I, though I kept it silent.
When Chris broke off from jiggling his leg and straightened to look, I rubbed his arm to remind him he wasn’t alone. Back in Boston, I had needed that. All too clearly, I remembered the sense of being targeted, shot at, even smothered by the enemy. Fortunately, I’d had Edward.
Actually, I had not. For the first court appearances, yes. But by the time my trial rolled around, the silence in our house had driven us apart, the grief was so impenetrable that we couldn’t get past it to talk. So Edward had been there in body but not spirit, and the pain of that? Salt on an open wound.
Grace swore again, now on a higher-pitched note. I wanted to touch her shoulder, hold her arm, do something to comfort her. Wasn’t that why I was here? Wasn’t that the only reason I was here? She had been silent through the drive, barely glancing at Chris as she burrowed into her coat in the passenger seat. Suddenly, she was back in force and upset, but I was sitting behind Jay and couldn’t reach her.
I continued to hold Chris’s arm, so the tremor I felt might have been his, might have been mine. Kevin had warned me that Zwick would be there, but his brazenness was still a shock.
“Is he really holding a press conference?” I asked. A wave of loathing took the edge off my nerves.
“Yup,” confirmed Jay.
“I thought the hearing was closed.” This from Grace in a panicky shriek.
Jay remained calm. “It is. Zwick won’t be in the courtroom, and he can’t pull stunts like this in the hallways, but the front steps are fair game.”
“Is there a back entrance?” I asked as Edward had five years before.
“Heading there now,” Jay said and did just that.
We parked and made it through the back door with only a handful of reporters closing in before they were stayed by a guard. Were film crews scattered along those back streets? I’d bet on it. And though cameras weren’t allowed inside, enough of the people we passed on our way to the courtroom were shifting phones in and around ears to suggest that there were at least a few surreptitious shots being taken.
Jay guided Grace, who held Chris’s arm. The boy had his hood up, and her face was shielded between hair and fur hood. I had only my bangs, which weren’t much of a shield. Had I thought