Chapter 35
brODY
“O h my god,” Nia laughs as she pulls open the front door to her house. “What did you do?”
Handing a large gift bag to her, I tell her, “This one is from Isla – who would like me to tell you that Katherine is welcome to call her ‘ Auntie Isla.’ I told her that will not be happening.”
I cart the box next to me into the house, alongside another gift bag, following Nia inside to set the two on the floor in front of the couch.
Nia wears a soft smile, standing next to me with her arms crossed over her middle. Her scrubs are a burnt orange color, fitting for the autumn weather beginning to creep into the air.
“You didn’t have to get her gifts,” she tells me.
“It was her birthday,” I argue. Reaching forward to take hold of her jaw, I pull her closer to me to press my lips to hers. “When is Katherine due back?”
“Her dad’s bringing her in half an hour,” she tells me, looking at the clock above the fireplace. “And then we have twenty minutes to get to work and school.”
“How much of this does she know about?”
“She just knows that we’re ‘not being married anymore,’” she tells me with a grimace.
“Okay,” I nod. “Then we have twenty-five minutes, to be safe.”
Though I’d planned for us to spend all of our allotted time revisiting the prep work we’ve done, we spend only the first fifteen minutes on prep work, dedicating the final ten minutes to flipping through photos and videos from Katherine’s birthday party.
She looks the happiest I’ve seen her, surrounded by the people who love her most.
I don’t get to see a lot of truly happy children in my work, outside of the rare occasion that a client has an infant who is blissfully unaware of the goings on in their life. Nia’s done a wonderful job of protecting her daughter from the ugliness that she’s been facing.
There aren’t many children who have walked out of my office and I’ve been able to confidently believe that they would be fine. So many of them aren’t shielded from their parents’ fighting, and a number far too high have witnessed things that no child should ever be exposed to.
While I’m sure that many of those children have gone on to receive the appropriate counseling later in their lives, a handful of them…their parents, like mine, should not have become parents.
I press my lips to Nia’s as I reach for my car keys on her kitchen counter, pressing the button at the side of the fob to unlock my doors. “It won’t be much longer,” I assure her.
“I’m really grateful for you, Brody,” she tells me. “I think this would have been a lot harder without you fighting for us.”
“You could have handled it just fine without me,” I tell her with a smile. “Wednesday afternoon. Be ten minutes early.”
She nods as I head down the entryway and out to the driveway, where my vehicle is waiting for me.
As I reach for the handle of my door, an unfamiliar car comes to a stop in front of the house. I move behind the SUV, stepping toward the sedan as Katherine comes barreling happily out of the back seat to fly toward the front door, which Nia opens for her.
Daniel Hart steps out of the driver’s seat with his eyes narrowed at me as he walks toward the house. Nia’s body language shifts in an instant, and she tries to usher her daughter into the house, but her efforts are fruitless.
“Why’s he here, Nia?”
“Thank you for bringing her home,” she tells him. “We’ll see you on Friday.”
Her worried eyes flick to mine, and I quickly step in front of him. “It’s time for you to leave, Mr. Hart.”
“Nia!” He shouts past me. “What is this guy doing here?”
“Brody—”
Looking over my shoulder, I offer Nia a nod in silent instruction for her to get inside.
“Katherine, I need you to go to your room with your mother,” I tell her daughter with a soft smile, reaching to gently push her into the house. “Sometimes, adults can be loud and scary when we talk.”
I wait for the door to close behind me as I stare at the man in front of me, grinding my molars against each other. While I don’t believe him to be a threat to the physical safety of either of the girls inside that house, I do believe him to be an emotional threat, and that can be just as dangerous.
Giving them a few more seconds to make it at least into the living area, I take a step closer to him.
“Do you remember signing a legally-binding document which stated that your only contact with my client would be that which pertained directly to Katherine Marie Hart?” I ask him.
“You’re at my wife’s house,” he argues. “I think I’m entitled to the reason why.”
“You are entitled to no information regarding my client,” I tell him.
I keep my arms crossed and my posture neutral as he advances on me, despite how badly I’d like to put my hands on him. I almost encourage him to take a swing at me or to try to reach past me for the door handle. I’d welcome the excuse to put him on the ground.
“Your choices are as follows,” I tell him as he takes another step closer. “Your first choice, which is what I’d recommend to you, is that you may leave now knowing that your daughter is safe at home with her mother. Or, should that not be to your liking, I can remind you that you’re now trespassing on private property and that if you do not leave the premises, I will have no choice but to remove you myself.”
“I don’t appreciate being threatened,” he sneers, and I cross my arms over my chest. “My kid lives here. My wife lives here. I can be wherever I want to be.”
“It’s unfortunate that you find me threatening, Daniel,” I say with a smirk. “You’ve been asked twice now to leave the property. There will not be a third request.”
The man in front of me swallows as I take a step closer to him, now letting my annoyance with him show on my face. Stepping away from me, he shakes his head and moves to stalk toward his sedan.
As soon as his vehicle leaves my eye line, I move to the front door and let myself into the house, locking it securely behind me. Pulling my wallet and car keys from my pockets, I drop them into the bowl sitting on top of the entryway table.
“I have to go to work,” Nia reminds me as she steps out from the hallway.
“I know,” I tell her, stripping off my jacket to hang it onto one of the available coat hooks.
Her head rests between my shoulder blades as her arms find their way around my waist, her thumbs slipping beneath the band of my slacks. “Did you hit him?”
“No, I didn’t,” I chuckle. “He made the wise decision to leave before I did.”
I make myself comfortable while Nia and Katherine finish getting themselves ready for their days, and I stay in the house as they leave. I’m not needed in the office for another hour, and while I doubt that Mr. Hart will come back, I plan to be present in the case that I’m wrong about him.
Nia has assured me on more than one occasion that he’s never been a violent man; not so much as a slammed door in the middle of a fight.
I can’t seem to bring myself to trust that.
Maybe my job has jaded me.
Ezra is pacing around my office as he prattles on, speaking to me about both a case he’s working and his latest fling, because I was right – the last one didn’t work out. I’d like to see the man spend a month on his own before diving headfirst into someone new, but I know that will never happen.
“And that, right there,” I tell him as I stand, stuffing my keys into my pocket, “is why I did not go into criminal justice.”
“No, you just chose to work the most depressing DV and divorce cases ever,” he snarks, taking a seat on the edge of my desk. “This one over today?”
“I sincerely hope so,” I tell him.
“This is the hot chick in the scrubs, right?”
“Leave my clients alone,” I tell him with a laugh as I reach for my attaché case. “Stay in your little dating app cesspool.”
“If you had any social life at all, you’d be on them, too!” He calls out as I step out of my office.
I pull in a steadying breath as I pass Linda’s desk, and when I step into the elevator, I lean against the wall, tapping my fingers against the handle of my case.
I’m not nervous, I tell myself. I don’t get nervous.
I just want this to be the last day that Nia has to spend worrying about her future.
No more taking time away from the job that she loves, no more hiding court dates from her daughter or listening to her in-laws’ baseless smear campaigns. No more. She’s worked hard to rebuild the confidence that she’d lost and to fight for what she knows is right for not only herself, but for her child.
She deserves to walk away from this today.
As I pull into a parking space, I see Nia bracing herself against the seat of her car, slipping into a pair of small heels, and I chuckle at the sight of her.
If I had to place a bet on it, I’d say that she very likely changed her entire outfit in her car upon her arrival, rather than running home to do so or taking the three minutes needed for it before leaving her job.
She smiles brightly at me as I approach her, leaning against the door of her car.
“Dan texted me this morning,” she tells me, and my body tenses. “It was…I don’t know, it was almost cryptic.”
“I can have him kept away from you in there,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t a bad text. It was just weird.” Her hand finds mine, her fingers interlacing with my own as she gives me a squeeze. “I’m really nervous today.”
“Do I seem nervous?” I ask her.
“You never do.”
“Then trust that,” I tell her, letting my thumb stroke hers. “Take a breath, show me your confidence, and we’ll head inside.”
With a nod, she pulls in a deep breath, following it with a roll of her shoulders to straighten her spine. I offer her hand a firm squeeze before we separate, placing it between her shoulder blades instead as I walk her into the building.
The energy has shifted in the courtroom today, and I credit that to the presence of Nia’s stepfather and a group of her friends – not just today’s character witnesses – taking up the seats behind us.
On the opposite side of the room, as he was previously, Daniel Hart is backed by his own parents and several other attendees who I assume to be his witnesses.
Our fifteen additional minutes of prep work seemed trivial at the time, but Nia disproves that from her place beside me. I watch proudly from my peripheral as she maintains composure, listening to her husband’s friends speak.
Even as her mother-in-law sits at the bench, attempting to place blame on her for the complications which led to her daughter’s premature birth, she keeps a cool mask plastered over her face.
The only thing that betrays the truth beneath it is the rapid bouncing of her leg and the whitened knuckles of her clasped hands atop the table in front of us.
When finally given a chance to address the judge directly, Nia looks to me and I offer her a subtle nod of encouragement. I want to tell her to make me proud, but she already has in ways that she can’t imagine.
“I just want this to be over,” she says, exasperation lacing each word. “I loved Dan. I’ll probably always love him in some way. He was my husband, he’s Katie’s dad – and he’s a good dad, I can’t say that he isn’t. I don’t want this to be more traumatic for our daughter than it already has been.”
I carefully scan the room as she speaks, watching the reactions of those in attendance. Her mother-in-law seems irritated, but I’ve grown to wonder if that isn’t simply what her face looks like. Her stepfather is proud; he’s watching her the way that Edie watches her children when they’re doing the right thing.
Her husband, on the other hand, looks distressed. He seems almost repentant.
In almost all of my other cases, I wait patiently, knowing that everything that could have been done has been done. That my job is done and that whatever will be, will be. I’ve done the best for my client and I’ve set them up for success to the best of my ability.
Today, however, I fidget with my pen, letting my eyes flit from person to person. I’ve sat in court with Judge Victor Franklin countless times in my career. He’s fair, he’s just, and when children are involved, they are his priority.
I’ve heard him make this speech a thousand different ways on a thousand different occasions, but still, I tamper my excitement until I hear the one sentence that I’ve been waiting maybe as long as Nia has to hear.
“The marriage between Daniel Hart and Nia Cavanaugh is hereby dissolved,” he announces.
Nia turns to me, her eyes wide. Her hand moves closer to mine on the table, though it doesn’t make contact. “I’m divorced?”
“You’re divorced,” I tell her with a smile. “It’s over.”
Without warning, her arms fly around my neck and she squeezes me so tightly that it forces me to laugh – not just a chuckle, but a full, deep belly laugh that I don’t think I’ve let out in years.
As all of us file out of the building, Nia bounds down the steps in the front of the courthouse, stuck somewhere between giddiness and tearfulness. The relief that she feels is no doubt laced with grief that the years she spent married to her ex-husband are now truly something of the past.
I see it all of the time. I wish that it could be different for her, but I understand that it can’t be, and if she needs space right now, she’ll have it.
“Congratulations, Ms. Cavanaugh,” I tell her as we reach her vehicle. “What would you like to do with your first hours of freedom?”
“I want to meet my former attorney at his house,” she tells me, “and I want to make him eat sugary, fatty, unhealthy ice cream with me. And I also want to make him watch The Notebook with me.”
“I believe your former attorney can make that happen for you,” I chuckle.
“Divorce aftercare,” she says with a smile, despite her eyes lining with tears.
“Yes,” I tell her with a brush of my hand against her arm, “divorce aftercare.”