Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Creed
I’m not allowed to sit at the table.
Fitz fought for it.
The judge said no.
The judge said this is a conservatorship matter, and the conservatorship matter has two parties, and Creed Lafontaine, by every legal definition the State of New York can produce, isn’t one of them.
So I sit in the front row of the gallery, alone, with my hands folded in my lap, while six feet in front of me, Halston sits at a wooden table next to Livia and signs a piece of paper that says he understands the nature of the proceeding.
That’s the official version.
The version that matters is this: my husband is at the table, my wife is beside him, and I’m close enough to hear the pen scrape but not close enough to count.
The courtroom is small. Twelve seats. No press.
A judge named Reyes who has been on the bench for nineteen years and who has, according to Fitz, never been outmaneuvered by Saint Claire’s money in any of the three previous matters their lawyers have brought before her.
She’s in her fifties, with reading glasses on a chain and a coffee mug on the bench beside her that says World’s Okayest Judge.
I don’t know if she chose the mug for today.
I hope she did.
At the other table are Constance, Everett, and Whit Whelan.
Constance hasn’t looked at me once.
She has looked at Halston three times.
She’s wearing a navy suit. Her hair is pulled back. There’s a double strand of pearls at her throat, expensive and old enough to have its own family history. She looks like a woman who dressed this morning for a portrait titled Grief With Legal Counsel.
Everett sits to her right. He’s been studying his cuticles since he sat down and only looks up when Whelan speaks.
Whelan is small and gray, and reading from a legal pad that he hasn’t written anything on.
I know because I’ve been watching him. I’ve had nothing else to do except sit where the law put me and notice things.
He’s performing the act of reading. A prop in a room where the actual case has already started bleeding through the walls.
Fitz lays it out fast.
He doesn’t give a speech. He hands the judge a binder and says, “Your Honor, the petition before the court is for the dissolution of the existing conservatorship over Halston Saint Claire and the appointment of Livia Crane Saint Claire as next of kin and spouse. The certificate of marriage between the petitioner and the conservatee is in the binder, tab one, dated and signed a year prior to the conservatorship Constance Saint Claire, Everett Saint Claire, and the Saint Claire trustees now claim that it governs his affairs. Tabs two through nine contain the evidentiary record.”
Judge Reyes opens the binder.
She looks at Halston.
“Mr. Saint Claire.”
“Your Honor.” He inclines his head.
His voice is controlled.
Too controlled.
It’s the voice he uses when giving less feels safer than giving anything real.
“Were you married to this woman on February ninth, ten years ago, in this state?”
“I was.”
“Do you remember the ceremony?”
“I don’t remember the ceremony, Your Honor. I remember the certificate. I have been shown it within the last twenty-four hours. My signature is on it.”
“Do you contest its authenticity?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Thank you.”
She closes tab one.
She doesn’t look at the Saint Claire table.
“Tab three contains the audio file,” she says. “Counsel for the petitioner has indicated it will be played in court. Are there objections?”
Whelan stands.
“Your Honor, we object to foundation—”
“Overruled.”
Whelan sits.
The recording is forty-one seconds long.
Forty-one seconds of Whit Whelan’s voice telling someone—a woman whose voice doesn’t appear on the recording, but whose responses are documented in the transcript on page eleven of tab three—that the family is prepared to be generous if the right understandings are reached quickly.
The window for these understandings closes when the daughter wakes up.
After that, the family will have to consider what other resources are available, and the family has considerable resources.
Forty-one seconds.
That’s all.
Enough to take the temperature out of the room.
Whelan doesn’t look at the speakers.
Constance is looking at Halston.
Halston is looking at the table.
I’m looking at my own hands because if I look at Constance too long, I’m going to forget I’m supposed to remain civilized.
When the audio cuts, Judge Reyes lets the silence sit for four seconds.
Then she says, “Tab six. Bank records. Counsel.”
Fitz walks her through the wire. Eleven emails.
A British Virgin Islands account. Ninety-six hours after the accident.
The numbers aren’t read aloud. The judge has read them.
Fitz says only, “Your Honor, the amounts are consistent with the testimony in tab seven,” and Judge Reyes nods once and moves on.
Tab eight is the notary.
Fitz says, “Your Honor, the conservatorship paperwork that placed Mr. Saint Claire under the care of his stepmother was notarized using a stamp registered to a notary public whose death certificate appears on the second page of tab eight. The stamp was used eleven months after she died. The notarization is therefore facially invalid, and any actions taken pursuant to it—including the transfer of medical decision-making, the holding of Mr. Saint Claire in a Connecticut facility for fourteen months following the accident, and the freezing of his independent financial accounts—are void ab initio.”
Judge Reyes says, “Counsel for the respondent.”
Whelan stands again.
He doesn’t look at the legal pad.
“Your Honor, while we acknowledge irregularities in the documentation, the substance of the conservatorship has been in the best interests of Mr. Saint Claire for the past ten years. The Saint Claire family has provided continuous care, medical oversight, and personal protection for a man whose memory and judgment have been severely compromised by the accident in question. The petitioner is a woman my client has not seen in a decade. My client can’t identify her in this room without prompting.
To transfer the conservatorship to her on the basis of a marriage certificate he doesn’t remember signing is to ask this court to privilege paperwork over reality. ”
Liv doesn’t move.
I can see her hand under the table, though.
Her fingers curl once.
Halston sees it too.
His hand shifts toward hers, barely, but enough.
Judge Reyes looks at Whelan for one long second.
“Anything else, counsel?”
“Your Honor—”
“Sit down, Mr. Whelan.”
Whelan sits.
And that’s when Constance stands.
Whelan reaches for her wrist. Constance shakes him off without looking. Everett doesn’t stop her. Everett, I realize, has been waiting for this. Maybe he suggested it. Maybe this was always the plan once the paper failed and the audio played and the dead notary entered the room with a stamp.
Constance doesn’t address the judge.
She turns her body toward Halston.
“Halston. Look at me.”
Whelan hisses something I can’t hear.
Halston doesn’t look up.
“Halston. You don’t remember this woman because there is nothing to remember. The Saint Claires have protected you from people like her your entire adult life.” She points at Livia. “Thieves—”
“Mrs. Saint Claire,” Judge Reyes says. “Take your seat.”
Constance keeps going.
“We have kept you safe. We have kept you well. We have kept you in the world your grandfather built for you, the world your father bled for, the world that has fed you and clothed you and put a roof over you since the day you were born.”
Judge Reyes raises a hand.
“Mrs. Saint Claire—”
Everett stands too.
“Hal. Listen to her.”
The judge’s voice cuts across the room.
“Mr. Saint Claire. Sit down.”
Everett doesn’t sit down.
“They want your money, Halston. They want what’s yours.
They have come back into your life ten years after you almost died because they want what your grandfather built and what your father held and what is sitting in trusts in your name.
She’s not your wife, and that man with her is using her to get to your name and money.
They are not your family. They are people who saw an opportunity in a man with a broken memory and took advantage of it. ”
Halston is very still.
I can see the back of his neck from where I’m sitting.
All the color has drained from it.
The room feels airless, like every person in it is waiting for the wrong thing to break.
Judge Reyes says, “I am giving you both one warning.”
Constance ignores her.
“Halston. Your grandfather’s legacy is yours.
It has always been yours. Every member of this family has spent the last ten years making sure you woke up to a life you could still live.
We have carried you. And these two people have come to take that away and call themselves your spouses while they do it. Look at me. Look at your mother.”
The word mother hits wrong.
It doesn’t belong to her.
It never did.
Liv’s head turns a quarter inch toward Halston.
Halston still hasn’t looked up.
But his hands are flat on the table now, palms down, and his shoulders have changed.
I have seen this set of shoulders one time in my life.
I don’t let myself name where.
Not yet.
Constance keeps going. She’s past the legal proceedings now. Past the judge. She has spent ten years rehearsing this in her head, and she won’t be stopped because she hasn’t understood yet that nobody in this room is going to save her from herself.
“Halston. You are a Saint Claire. You are the heir. You are the man your grandfather chose. These people want to take everything Cornelius built and hand it to a woman who left you for a decade and a man your contracts won’t even let you be photographed with.
They want to exploit you. They want to—”
Halston says, “Stop.”