a plea of leniency from Ben, the judge suspended any finding pending a two-year probation, with the understanding that if Chris stayed clean during that time, all charges would be dropped.
Grace’s case was more complex. She spent several nights in lock-up while Jay scrambled behind the scenes. He did manage to get her released on bail—huge victory there. Granted, the level of bail was high enough to terrify her. And Federal agents watched her day and night. Not that she would have run. Chris was the ultimate pawn. Short term, he was with his father. She knew that any attempt to flee meant she would never see him again.
If the analogy was to chess, though, she held the all-powerful queen. Her evidence against Carter Brandt was so strong—and Brandt’s desire to keep it hidden so desperate—that he agreed to a deal. Kidnapping charges against her would be dropped and a reasonable custody arrangement agreed to in exchange for her surrendering the incriminating evidence.
Did she actually hand it all over without keeping any proof of its existence? Maybe, maybe not. No matter that she had Jay on her side, Ben on her side, so many others of us dying to testify on her behalf, she didn’t trust Congressman Brandt. He had money and power, both of which held sway in a court of law, unless one had a weapon against them. I was guessing she kept a little something, just in case.
That said, old habits die hard, meaning that she did consider leaving town. Well after the legal issues were settled, the notoriety of the case made her paranoid when we left to shop the Manchester outlets or the Hanover boutiques. But Chris wanted to finish high school in Devon; he had become something of a hero among his friends. And besides, she feared that her past would be waiting for her wherever she went. At least here she was assured of a job, relative safety from gawkers, and a solid client base. She often disappeared when Chris was in Washington with his dad, though whether she was out looking for a new home or holed up with Ben, I didn’t know. Our relationship still held secrets.
I did finally give her raven-black hair, though. I figured she had the right to look the way she wanted after the hell she’d been through. And it wasn’t all bad, that raven hair, especially with a body wave to soften the starkness. Now, I studied the picture we’d taken when that session was done. She was a seriously striking woman. It was a miracle she had stayed hidden so long. Had it not been for the press …
But I couldn’t go there. I had sworn to put that particular resentment behind me.
Yes, I received a probation-surrender notice soon after Grace’s arrest, and, yes, I had to appear in court in Boston. But it was different this time. For one thing, my family was there rooting for me, as were not one, not two, but three carloads of friends from Vermont. For another, five years after my initial trial, the attorney general who had made headlines of me was out, and the new one didn’t bother to come to court that day, which gave little incentive for press coverage—particularly after kidnapping charges against Grace were dropped, which made the case against me iffy at best.
Shanahan was humiliated. Was I sorry? Absolutely not. To this day, I’m convinced that his motivation in filing the probation-violation order was jealousy of Edward, whom I had chosen over him. His vindictiveness had caused me emotional and monetary pain. So no, I did not count Michael as a friend. He had proven himself neither reasonable nor loyal.
Cornelia Conrad, our savvy postmistress, was both. She sat front and center that day in Boston, exchanging smiles with the judge and greeting court officers like the long-lost friends that it turned out they actually were.
Everyone has a story, my mother remarked after the fact, because Cornelia certainly did. We knew she had been a professor in Boston. What we didn’t know was that her professorship was in law and that she taught evenings. By day, she was a clerk-magistrate in Boston, presiding over probable cause hearings, issuing warrants, and setting bail, any of which promised less stress than the law firm from which she’d come. And for twenty years as a clerk-magistrate, she was fine. Then, one day, she set bail in a domestic violence case, only to have the defendant go home