47. Hi, Gorgeous. #2
“So for years, your husband lied to your face. Stole from you. Betrayed you in your own home...” He looked at the jury and let it sit, then turned back to me.
“Out of curiosity, Ms. Carter… if it had been you. If you had walked into your home the way my client walked into his, and found your husband and my client’s wife in your bed.
” He spread his hands. “What would your reaction have been? Calm? Cool? Collected?”
“Objection.” Santos stood.
“Withdrawn.” He smiled. The jury had heard it. He'd planted what he needed to. “No further questions.” He sat down.
Santos stood to repair the damage. “Ms. Carter. Every marriage has its seasons, its difficulties. You'd agree with that?”
“Yes.”
“And despite everything this court has heard, despite Malik Chambers’ flaws, you loved your husband. You miss him. Grieve for him. Isn't that true?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Ms. Carter. You loved him. You miss him. You grieve him. Isn't that true?” she repeated.
I was stuck again. The room waited.
“Ms. Carter, answer the question,” Judge Smith instructed.
Malik's mother was three rows back. I could feel her there without looking. I set each word down like it was glass.
“I had love for him once. But he wasn't the man I thought I’d married. So I can’t tell you I miss him.
” I kept my voice level. “But I don’t have to miss him to be sorry he's gone. I'm sorry my son lost his father. I’m sorry his mother lost her son. I’m sorry Mr. Marsh threw his life away over two people who couldn’t keep their vows.
It’s a tragedy all around. That's all the grief I have to give. It's the honest amount.”
Santos held my eyes a second longer than needed. Her mouth tightened, then she smoothed it over before the jury could catch it. It wasn't the answer she'd put me up there to give. I knew that. I just didn't have the grieving widow in me, and I wasn't going to fake it.
The defense was back up before Santos sat. “Ms. Carter, you just said you're sorry your son lost his father.” He paused, theatrically. “Was Malik a good father?”
I looked at him. Then at Malik's mother and brother, both of them tensed, waiting for me to give them the man they were grieving.
“He did his best,” I said.
“His best?” He let it curdle in the air. “Did his best include leaving your two-year-old son to fall from a kitchen counter, and split his head open, screaming until a neighbor called 911? All because Malik Chambers was too occupied upstairs in your bed, screwing my client's wife?”
“Objection!” Santos shouted as the courtroom erupted with gasps and expressions of disdain and disgust.
“Quiet in the courtroom!” Judge Smith banged her gavel. “I will have you removed!”
“Objection, Your Honor.” Santos repeated. “Relevance.”
“Goes to the victim's character,” the defense countered. “The state opened this door.”
“Overruled.” Judge Smith said.
“The victim is not on trial here, Your Honor!”
“Overruled. You may answer the question.”
I cleared my throat. “No,” I said. “It did not.”
“No further questions.”
The judge said I could step down. I came off the stand and walked the long aisle toward the doors, past Malik's mother, who wouldn't look at me, and I didn't blame her. I'd just told a room full of strangers that her son wasn't who she'd buried.
I should have felt cruel. I didn't. I felt done.
Nobody deserves to die the way Malik died.
That much is true. But a man builds his own legacy with how he lives, and Malik had built his in the dark with the lies stacked under a life everyone in that community had admired.
He'd looked the part and played it well enough that people grieved a man who never existed.
The cost of living like that wasn't just his to pay.
It was Micah's. My son would grow up with the history of a father he could never point to and say I want to be like him. That was the part that hurt me.
But I'd stopped mourning the rest of it a long time ago. My marriage and the years I'd shrunk myself to fit it. As I walked out of the courtroom with my heels too loud on the floor, it finally felt finished. That chapter of my life closed behind me with the courtroom door.
Julian was waiting for me on the other side of it.
He didn't say anything at first. He just opened his arms, and I walked into them, and he folded me in and put his mouth against the top of my head, me sagging into the warmth of him.
“I know that wasn't easy,” he said, into my hair. “You handled it extremely well. I'm proud of you.”
“I'm just glad it's over,” I said muffled against his chest.
“It's over. How you feeling?”
“Hollowed out. But lighter, if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
We stared at each other with three weeks of unsaid sitting. “We've got a lot to talk about,” I said.
“Yes, we do.”
“Alyssa!” My mother's voice rang up the hall, my sisters with her. She reached me and took my face in both hands. “You did good, baby.”
She and my sisters gave me hugs as Julian stepped back and watched. My mother looked past me at Julian, warmly. “We're all going to get something to eat. Julian, come too.”
“I'll let you have your family time, Ms. Carter.” He squeezed my hand once. “Y'all go on.”
As we all turned toward the elevators, Julian leaned in close. “I'm staying at The George,” he said. “Come by tonight. I don't care how late. Just us.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tonight.”
We went back to my mother's after. Ma, my three sisters, and me. For a while nobody said much. I sat at the table where I'd once told my mother I was miserable in my marriage. The table has heard a lot.
“That Julian is a good man,” Ma said finally, setting a cup in front of me. “Flying all the way up here. You hold on to that one, Alyssa.”
Jada set her cup down and huffed. “What's that supposed to mean, Ma?”