Lies of the Heart (9 page)

S
he’s waiting for Dana outside the women’s bathroom, across the hall from the courtroom. Dana’s probably perched at the edge of the toilet at this very moment, Katie thinks, taking two or three furtive puffs from a Merit 100; Katie can picture her sister perfectly, cigarette dangling out of her mouth, one hand waving away smoke while the other one mists the air around her with the slender tube of peach- or melon-burst spray she always keeps in her purse.

After Carly was finally calmed and order restored, Judge Hwang had called for a fifteen-minute recess; she dismissed the jurors, barely waiting for the door to shut behind them before leveling her gavel at Richard, then Donna. She tossed it onto the bench, gathered up her robes, and stormed through the door at the back of the courtroom to her chambers.

“Meet me on the second floor, conference room three,” Richard said to Katie, his face impossible to read. He snapped his briefcase shut, followed Donna to chambers. Across the room Jerry sat hunched over the defense table as Daniel Quinlin, the Warwick Center’s recreation assistant, sat beside him talking quietly. The bailiffs stood close by, trading glances and eyeing Jerry.

“C’mon, Dana,”
Katie whispers under her breath now, seeing exactly what she hoped to avoid: the Warwick Center people emerging from the courtroom, one after the other.
Oh, great,
Katie thinks, but is relieved to see them almost instinctively walk in the opposite direction from her, toward a long bench by the elevators. Sure enough, there’s Patricia Kuhlman, the acting director of the Warwick Center, a tall, older woman who has always intimidated Katie by her stern and officious manner. She converses with Veronica, the receptionist, their heads bent close together. And there is Daniel Quinlin again, this time with his arm around little Carly, and Jan Evers and Billy Zahn, and a few others Katie knows from both the work and recreation programs. Trailing behind them is Judith, the heavyset woman from the cafeteria, her bangs flapping on her forehead as she lets out short puffs of air.

The last time Katie saw so many of them together was at Nick’s funeral in May. Watching them now, she replays their stubborn solidarity that day, the way they determinedly went through the receiving line as a group—some touching the top of her hand or arm briefly, some going in for quick, boxy hugs—all murmuring how sorry they were for her loss. That entire day Katie had waited vainly for one of them to pull her aside, to acknowledge the obvious complexity of her grief. Nick packing up and leaving their home, and then, before he could come back to resume their life together, leaving the world forever. Their entire future decided in a split second by Jerry. Did any of them even
try
to imagine how unfinished it all felt to Katie? All the unanswered questions and fears and every complicated little moment and gesture between Nick and her in the month they were separated adding up to exactly nothing now that he was gone for good? She had wanted someone,
anyone,
to ask her what it was like to stand in that receiving line, beside Nick’s impossibly polite mother: Nick’s wife, yet not his wife precisely for the past month—never his wife again. The anger and confusion that came with feeling like an impostor at her own husband’s funeral as she accepted their condolences next to a woman who acknowledged her presence with only a stiff smile.

A couple of them did make an effort afterward—a card from Dottie Halverson, the cheerful and motherly nurse who lived only a few streets away from Katie; an apologetic, stilted phone call from Eddie Rodriguez, the athletic director at the recreation center. But now, as they slowly gather around the bench near the elevators, they transform from her friends once again, become that same dark, amorphous mass from the funeral, and Katie’s glad. It’s easier this way, easier not to want them near—easier to think of them instead as “those people.”

Dana is just emerging from the bathroom when Carly’s insistent voice rings out in the hallway.

“I can
too
if I want,” she says.

“Uh-oh,” Dana says, stepping beside Katie.

They watch Carly disentangle herself from underneath Daniel’s arm and push past the group, face unyielding. She stamps toward them, her pink dress hiked up high.

“Remember, she doesn’t know any better,” Dana whispers in Katie’s ear.

Carly stops in front of Katie, lets the folds of her dress go. Plants both hands on her hips.

“Katie,” Carly says in a huff, a statement. She stands in front of Katie, breathing hard, her small face fixed in an irritated glare, her hair sticking out at a dozen curling angles.

“Hi, Carly,” Dana says, shifting into Carly’s line of sight. “Remember me?”

Carly doesn’t even acknowledge her.

“Hey there, Car,” Katie says softly, but that’s all Carly is really waiting for, all she needs. With a small whimper, the girl throws herself at Katie, her chubby arms circling Katie’s waist.

“It’s okay,” Katie says, holding her close.

Carly rubs her face into Katie’s shirt, and then the sobs come out, choking and long. Katie feels the wet tears through her shirt, strokes Carly’s hair and plants noisy kisses on top of her head.

“Missing you, lady,” Carly manages some minutes later.

“Me, too, honey.”

“And . . . and that dumb . . .
Nick.
”

“I know.”

“Missing both of you
tons
now,” Carly says, squeezing her hard. “Too much, lady.”

Daniel is by their side after a couple of minutes, looking sheepish and awkward.

“Hey, Katie.”

“Hi.”

“We should go, sweetheart,” Daniel says, his hand on Carly’s back. She loosens her grip on Katie and turns to Daniel, glowering.

“Hold on one minute, buster,” she says, wiping her nose across her sleeve. She sniffles loudly and tugs at Katie’s hand, pulling her a few feet away.

Carly reaches down her dress and yanks out her string necklace with the metal whistle attached. She pulls it over her head.

“Yup, I got tons of them at home, you bet,” she says, all business once again, so Katie leans down and lets Carly put the whistle around her neck. “Just in case, lady,” she says with serious eyes. “You never know round here.” Carly turns to Daniel.

“Okay, let’s go, I’m hungry,” she commands, gathering up her dress. She marches off to the group by the elevator without looking back, Daniel trailing behind her.

The conference room smells like the yellow, moldering pages of an old book, Katie thinks as she looks again at the clock above the door. Almost eleven-fifteen and still no Richard; there’s probably no chance they’ll resume before the lunch break now. She fingers the whistle around her neck, considers blowing it just to get Dana to say something to her.

The floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side of the room let in big blocks of sand-speckled light that sparkle and illuminate the dark table in the center of the room, where Katie sits. Dana stands near the windows in the shadows, arms crossed, one knee bent with her foot pressed against the wall.

“I thought you had clients all day,” Katie finally says. “I thought social workers didn’t have time for the extras.”

“You’re not an extra, Kate.”

Kate.
Her sister and mother are the only ones who call her that, and only when they’re upset, or about to say something “important.” A long moment draws out between them, and then her sister finally breaks the silence.

“You knew Richard might touch her,” Dana says. “You knew.”

“I forgot to tell him,” Katie says. “But how could I know he’d do that?”

“Because for some reason you always know,” Dana says. “You always know about people, the things they’ll do. Especially after you’ve spent some time with them.”

She slides out the cushioned brown chair beside Katie and sits down, eyeing her. The red highlights in Dana’s hair bring out the amber-green flecks in her eyes, and for a moment Katie is suddenly amazed, once again, by her sister’s confident beauty.

“Please don’t pull the therapy stuff with me, Dana,” she says, recovering quickly. “C’mon. I need some air, and you can have a cigarette.”

Katie is halfway out of her chair when the door opens and Richard walks in. She sits back down, shoulders tense. Richard’s eyes fasten on the whistle around Katie’s neck. He carefully places his briefcase on the table, fingertips resting on top.

“Look, I really don’t care at all what you think of me and what I do,” he says quietly. “I really don’t.”

The trembling in his voice is unsettling, but Katie reminds herself that this emotion has nothing to do with Nick—with her losing Nick.

“I thought we were in this together and that you actually wanted to
help
me prosecute the man who killed your husband. But if you’re going to withhold pertinent information”—his voice rises a little with each word—“then I really don’t see the point of meeting with you, because it’s just a huge waste—”

“Excuse
me,
” Dana says, rising, but Richard lifts his palm at her, a stop sign. He turns his head slightly in her direction, his eyes addressing the table.

“No, look, I’m going to say this,” he announces, then turns back to Katie. “I see it, you know, the contempt in your eyes. And that’s okay, that’s fine. But don’t meet with me and my staff and then act like we’re a team, Katie, don’t pretend you’re going to give me the inside scoop on these people so I can keep this very dangerous guy in jail, because it’s pretty clear to me that I’m in this
alone.
”

Katie is the first to look away.

“So if we have that clear—”

Dana steps around the table toward him, her voice calm and soothing. “Mr. Bellamy,” she says, “I think it might help if we all took a few minutes to relax.”

He finally looks directly at Dana. “Well, that’s a great idea, actually, because we have all the time we need to relax. We’re done for the day.”

Katie sucks her breath in surprise, and he turns back to her.

“That’s right. After an hour of arguing about procedure and viable witnesses, Judge Hwang said she had to call it a day because she felt ill. But she made one thing very clear—another scene like that and she’ll call a mistrial, which means this starts all over again.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know—” Katie doesn’t trust her voice to say more.

“The judge, jury selection, the whole nine yards, all over again. Only this time we get jurors who’ve read about the circus back there, about the asshole assistant DA who bullied the little retarded girl—”

“Of course you didn’t bully her,” Katie says, instinctively reaching out to him, but now it’s Richard’s turn to flinch.

“If these jurors are dismissed and talk to the press? That’s how it’s going to translate, Katie. The truth won’t matter.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus, I didn’t know what to do in there.”

For once this gesture seems sincere, and Katie wants to tell him that, wants to explain that if only he could act like this in the courtroom, it would be better—it would feel
right.
But he turns away from her, grabs his briefcase.

He stops at the door, doesn’t look back. “There’s a mob of reporters down there,” he says. “You might want to wait it out here a little longer.”

Right after Nick and Katie separated, she realized that just sitting down inside their home was going to be a problem. Sitting down to eat, sitting down to watch TV or to write out a grocery list, because every place in the house looked like someone else should be there already, waiting for her. Now that there’s no chance of Nick’s return, the hardest thing is to stop moving, to find herself suddenly sitting someplace where Nick should already be, waiting for her, or where he will eventually come, with a smile and a funny story about one of his clients who has a combination stuttering/saliva problem. Instead Katie finds herself at the table with a cold plate of spaghetti or under the blankets in bed with her sketch pad resting against her knees, pillows propped behind her back, and she catches herself turning to where he used to be, where he
should
be. Sometimes she even pauses and tilts her head, because she’s sure that sound is his car pulling in to their rocky driveway, the stray stones rattling against the side of the house, or she’s positive that she’s heard the refrigerator door just close, because of course Nick would be on his way back to the table with more grated cheese—he couldn’t get enough. But he’s never there, he never comes, and she’s not sure how to stop sitting and waiting, to stop sitting and listening for him or hoping that at some point he actually
will
walk into the room, a big apologetic smile on his handsome face.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to take so long.