Unexpected Dismounts (32 page)

Hank didn’t answer until I raised my head. “What makes you think they aren’t the same thing?” she said.

She slid from the chair and left me in the kitchen alone. With God. Whose waiting pulsed across the room like the heart line, the one I’d watched in Chief’s room, hour after hour racing and slowing and jerking with things I couldn’t know.

I felt my hands on my lips before I knew I had put them there.

“Is it yours?” I whispered. “Is it your pain?”

Speak through it, Allison,
said the throbbing in my forehead and the burning in my throat and the stabbing in my chest.
Speak through it. And you will give birth.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It didn’t dawn on me until I was a block from the courthouse that Kade had actually sounded upbeat on the phone that morning. It must have been his version of compartmentalizing. I hoped he was still doing it, after packing up all his belongings from his hotel, dumping them in Chief’s garage, and rustling up a notary public, all in the span of four hours.

Whatever compartment he was in, Kade felt confident in it. Or at least it looked that way when he met me on the other side of security, wearing a dark blue suit worthy of a Harvard Law graduate and a red tie that clearly said
bring it on.
In a Massachusetts accent. The self-assurance had snapped back into place.

“You look great,” he said.

I had Hank to thank for that. She wasn’t any more into clothes and makeup than I was, but she did prevent me from walking out the door in sweats, with mascara running down my face.

“I guess anything would be an improvement over the usual, huh?” I said.

“Stop.”

Kade brought me up short, right in the middle of the hallway.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Look, what you see is what you get.”

“Stop,” he said again. “Stop running yourself down. You have to go in there like the Allison Chamberlain I know.”

“There’s only one.”

“Yeah, the one who takes nothin’ offa nobody. Except God.” He didn’t toss it off like the gratuitous prepositional phrase he thought would get him points.

“That’s all you have to do,” he said. “That, and trust your lawyers.”

“‘Lawyers’ plural? Do you have Chief on Skype or something?”

“Or something,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He took my elbow so much the way Chief always did—always used to—I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from putting my mascara in jeopardy again. That stopped working when we got about halfway down the aisle and I saw Chief at the table in a wheelchair. He looked gaunt and drawn, perhaps like an aging eagle, but he was there, sitting tall, making everything around him fall into place.

“Are you serious?” I whispered to Kade.

“He’s not up to taking first chair,” he said. “He’s here as advisory counsel.” I didn’t care if he was there as window dressing. My palms stopped sweating. I made it the rest of the way down the aisle.

“Thank you,” I said as I took my place beside him.

“Don’t thank me. I’m here to bust you if you try to take anybody down.”

“Good luck with that.”

“If you get the urge to kick somebody’s tail, write it on here,” he said, and pushed a legal pad toward me.

“Why?” I said.

“Because I don’t believe in luck,” he said.

I hoped he believed in something, because Priscilla Sanborn swept in then, wearing the usual ankle length tunic over baggy pants, both in a self-righteous shade of gray. As always, she strode as if the waters had parted in expectation of her arrival. There was nothing different from the persona I’d seen before. No trace of anxiety in her hands. No hint of angst in the way she took charge of her table. No indication that this day was even a variation on any other.

It hit me like a punch in the stomach: She didn’t care enough to be afraid.

I put my lips next to Kade’s. “We have to win this,” I said.

“You’re going to walk out of here today with your son,” he whispered back.

I knew after the first thirty minutes it would take more than a miracle to get a final ruling today. The Honorable Charles Walton Atwell the Third, a man of elongated features, who had possibly been a classmate of Ms. Willa’s, spoke at the speed of a snail and felt the need for frequent long, digesting pauses. He spent fifteen minutes telling us all that this was not a trial but a hearing, which he intended to conduct informally but with dignity. Endless pause. Each side would have an opportunity to speak and bring witnesses if they deemed it necessary. However …
interminable
pause … we were all to keep in mind that no crime had been committed and that no one was going to be indicted.

Evidently Mr. Quillon didn’t get that memo. His opening statement to the judge began with, “It is our intention, Your Honor, to show that the defendant, Allison Chamberlain—”

“Mr. Quillon.” His Honor pulled down on his already lengthy chin with his hand. “There is no defendant.… I only want to hear why your client claims to be the better parental choice for this child.”

“That was exactly where I was headed, Your Honor,” Quillon said.

Right after he made that U-turn,
I scribbled on the pad.

Mr. Quillon escorted Priscilla Sanborn to a chair near the judge’s bench. You couldn’t really call it a witness stand. She made it look more like a throne.

After he established Priscilla’s relationship to Desmond and, for the record, everything about her except her blood type, Mr. Quillon puffed out his chest as if he alone were responsible for this woman’s achievements and said, “Ms. Sanborn, please tell His Honor what you do for a living.”

“I am the director of a small home for the orphans of deceased AIDS victims in Botswana,” she said. “My staff of five and myself are responsible for the well-being of thirty children. We have more than two hundred on our waiting list, many of whom will die from the disease themselves before we have room for them.”

Kade scribbled furiously on his own pad. I set my pencil down on the table.

Quillon looked at Judge Atwell as if he were giving him an opportunity to applaud. His Honor just pulled on his chin.

“It sounds like your plate is already rather full, Ms. Sanborn,” Quillon said. “But you’re willing to take on the care of your nephew as well?”

“Desmond will have a place of his own,” she said. “He will not be living with the orphans—”

Kade circled something on his pad.

“—although seeing the work we’re doing will certainly build his character. How better to develop integrity in a young man than to have him experience firsthand what it means to sacrifice for the good of the helpless and hopeless?”

I glanced at Kade’s legal pad, where he was writing,
And what the *&$%^ do you think AC is doing?

I put my hand on his. When he looked at me, I shook my head.

“Now, in terms of that sacrifice you spoke of …” Quillon glanced at the judge. His pauses were growing longer than the judge’s. “You don’t earn a great deal of money in your line of work. How will you support Desmond?”

“I am financially compensated by generous donors,” Priscilla said. “It has been my experience that when you open yourself up to the universe in a positive way, the universe opens itself up to you.”

Chief handed me my pencil, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of Priscilla Sanborn. It was like looking at an alternative brand of myself, done up in a more appealing package, with a far more aggressive marketing plan behind her. It didn’t make me hurt. It left me cold.

Kade pushed his pad toward me.
She almost had me with the orphans,
he’d written.

“The bottom line?” Priscilla was saying. “My nephew has spent the first twelve years of his life surrounded by addicts and prostitutes and drug dealers, and, granted, that has been on both the street side and the rehabilitation side. But as the only living member of his family, I see it as my responsibility to see that he spends the next six years at least away from the haunting memories of his past, in a place where he is surrounded by children his own age and mentors who will provide him with a safe, healthy environment.”

I broke the pencil in half.

“Do you have reason to believe that his current environment is not healthy and safe?”

“I do.”

Judge Atwell was gathering himself up, but Mr. Quillon said quickly. “We are not putting Ms. Chamberlain on trial, Your Honor. But we would be remiss if we did not provide you with a picture of what Desmond Sanborn’s life looks like in her care.”

Kade stood up, but the judge pressed both hands down in the air and waited for Kade to sit.

“As long as you can do it without attacking Ms. Chamberlain,” he said to Quillon.

Mr. Quillon selected a regretful expression and put it on. “Sadly, Your Honor, we won’t have to say a word.”

He moved solemnly to the table and picked up a brown envelope. The I-hate-to-have-to-do-this look was still on his face, but his eager hands betrayed him. He was barely containing his glee as he slid a stack of photographs from the envelope and stepped up to the bench.

What is THAT?
I wrote with the now-stubby end of my pencil.

Kade scrawled a question mark and leaned forward to take the set Mr. Quillon offered him. My heart went into a slow, excruciating fall as Kade passed them to me one by one.

Desmond sitting on the porch at the Monk’s Vineyard, sipping what looked like a glass of champagne.

Desmond chatting at that same location with a barely clad Ophelia.

Desmond coming out of the hospital with Hank—she in leathers, he in a sling. Desmond on the beach, alone except for the two figures in the shadows, on the verge of a kiss. Chief and me.

These weren’t taken from the window of a Mercury Sable. Or caught by luck at random times. Someone had to have watched us constantly to get these pictures. My skin crawled right up my spine.

Quillon gave a theatrical sigh. “A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it, Your Honor?”

“That may be so.… But I am going to give Miss Chamberlain a chance to use some words when it’s her turn. Anything else?”

“I think that pretty much says it all,” Quillon said.

“Mr. Capelli, do you have any questions for Ms. Sanborn?”

I tapped
She almost had me at the orphans
on his legal pad and frowned at him.

“Trust me,” he whispered.

A deluge of what-were-you-thinking? flooded over me. He was too young. His finesse was too shallow and his fervency too deep. I looked at Chief with what I knew was panic in my eyes. He picked up my pencil stub and wrote,
I think I know where he’s going.

“One question, Ms. Sanborn,” Kade said. “You indicated that some of the orphans you take care of suffer from the AIDS virus themselves.”

“That’s correct,” she said.

“So, I’m sure you have a way of ensuring that Desmond doesn’t become infected as well.”

“Desmond won’t be coming into contact with the children at the center.”

“I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong.” Kade consulted his pad. “No, I think you said Desmond would be surrounded by children his own age.”

“Not those children.”

Kade waited for her to go on, but she simply gave him an impassive stare.

“Then … to which children are you referring?” he said.

For the first time, her gaze wavered as she glanced at Mr. Quillon.

“Do you mean the children at the school he’ll be attending?” Kade said.

“Yes.”

“In Botswana.”

“No.”

The formerly loquacious woman had become verbally anorexic. I sat up uneasily.

“Where is the school you’d be sending Desmond to, Ms. Sanborn?” Kade said.

“I have already made the arrangements,” she said, “with a school near London.”

Chief dispensed with the pencil and went straight for my shoulders, pressing me back into the chair I was already coming out of.

“So what you’re saying is that you want to take Desmond out of the loving environment he’s already in to put him in a boarding school, away from you, in a foreign country …”

“England is hardly a foreign country.”

Kade let that sink in. When she jerked her face away, he said, “No more questions, Your Honor.”

“I need a recess so I can go throw up,” I whispered to him when he returned to the table.

But Judge Atwell was already pulling himself out of a pause. “Is there anyone else we need to hear from, Mr. Quillon?”

“Yes, Your Honor. The Reverend Garrett Howard.”

“Do you know this guy?” Kade muttered to me.

“Apparently not,” I said.

He motioned for me to make some notes for him, but I couldn’t even get my fingers around what was left of the pencil. I could only watch Garry Howard take an oath to tell the truth and hope he knew what the Sam Hill it was.

The white hair was in perfect order, the conservative tie neatly knotted, as Garry rested his hands on the arms of the chair. Then folded them in his lap. Then used them to smooth the unruffled wings. All proof that he was ill at ease. That, and the fact that he had yet to look in my direction.

By the time my heartbeat slowed down, Mr. Quillon had gotten the reverend through the preliminaries and was moving on to his relationship with Ms. Sanborn.

What relationship?

“I had never met her until she came to see me several weeks ago.”

“Do you remember the date?” Mr. Quillon said.

“Monday, March nineteenth.”

Two days after the footwashing.

“Why did she seek you out?”

“She wanted to talk to me about Allison Chamberlain.”

“Why you?”

“I am—was—Allison’s spiritual mentor.”

That was stretching it.

“Past tense?” Mr. Quillon said, looking for all the world like he didn’t already know.

“Allison has drifted from the church in the last several months.”