22. Chapter 22
Jade
The silver fork in my hand feels like it weighs fifty pounds.
It is Graham's untouched coffee that holds my eye. Steam gone, surface flat and still, the mug sitting exactly where he put it down twenty minutes ago. He has been in this room since breakfast and hasn't moved, which tells me everything the granite mask doesn't.
I set the fork down. It clatters against the porcelain. Iris flinches in her seat. She's coloring a picture of an owl, but her small shoulders are hunched toward her ears. She knows. Kids are barometers for the high-pressure systems adults bring into a room.
"They moved the hearing."
Graham's voice is flat. The level tone he uses when the world is burning down and he's decided he's the only one allowed to hold the extinguisher.
Something cold moves through me. I keep my voice steady for Iris's sake.
"How much time?"
"Forty-eight hours." He looks at Iris, his expression flickering with a brief agonizing flash of tenderness before he shutters it again.
"Seven weeks of careful staging, and now an emergency motion from Beatrice's lawyers.
They're claiming the current environment is unstable and requires immediate judicial intervention. "
"Unstable?"
I glance around the kitchen. Warm. The scent of toasted bread and sandalwood. Last night this house felt like a sanctuary. Now it feels like a glass box waiting for a hammer.
Graham's phone vibrates on the counter. He glances at the screen and his jaw tightens so hard I expect the bone to snap. He doesn't pick it up.
"The board?"
"The Chairman. He'll have to wait."
"Is Christopher's deal locked?"
"As of seven this morning. He's pleading. The Whitlocks' names are in the proffer. Pierce is going to use it at the hearing tomorrow."
"Why would Halloway move it up if Christopher's deal weakens her side?"
"Because Beatrice told her to. She thinks if she rules before the proffer becomes public record, she can salvage some of it.
Pierce thinks the worse her position gets, the harder she'll push to get a ruling on the books while she still controls the bench.
" He pauses. "And Voss called twenty minutes ago.
The surveillance team Beatrice has been running pulled back overnight.
She's not gathering anymore. She's moving. "
I exhale, a small sharp sound.
Iris has stopped coloring. She's looking at her crayon like she forgot what it's for.
"Iris." I put on my warmest voice. "Do you want to take Judge to the dock and feed the ducks while Daddy and I figure out boring grown-up things?"
She doesn't answer right away. That alone puts a knot in my chest. Iris always answers right away.
"What's a hearing?"
Her voice is very small. She's still looking at the crayon.
I pull my chair around so I'm sitting next to her instead of across the table. "It's like a meeting. A very important one, where Daddy talks to a judge and tells her all about what a great home you have here."
"Why does she need to know that?"
"Because it's her job to make sure little girls are safe and loved."
Iris considers this. She lines the crayon up carefully with the edge of her coloring page. "Are you going to be at the meeting?"
"I'm going to be right there with Daddy."
"The whole time?"
"The whole time."
She looks up. Her eyes are serious like six-year-olds' eyes get when they've decided something is too big to treat like a regular question.
"And then you're coming home after?"
"Then we're coming home after."
"Iris. Did Grandma tell you something about the meeting?"
A pause. Then, very quietly: "She said sometimes judges decide kids should live with their grandparents. Because it's safer."
The kitchen tilts slightly to one side.
Behind me, I hear Graham's breath catch. Just once, quiet. He doesn't move. He's letting me handle this because he knows that if he opens his mouth right now, he won't sound like a father. He'll sound like the man Beatrice has been telling Iris about.
"Iris. Listen to me. The judge's job is to make sure little girls are safe and loved. You are safe here. You are loved here. The judge is going to look at this house and at your daddy and at me, and she is going to see that. Okay?"
"Okay."
"And Grandma loves you. But she's wrong about this part. Sometimes grown-ups are wrong, and the judge's job is to figure out who's right."
Iris nods. Once. Decisive. The nod she uses when she's filed a piece of information into the place she keeps the things she trusts.
She holds my gaze for another beat, checking the math. Then she slides off her chair, picks up the toast I hadn't been eating, and calls over her shoulder for the security detail to walk her to the dock.
Once she's gone, I turn back to Graham.
"Forty-eight hours. What does that mean tactically?"
He stands and starts pacing, his body running fifteen calculations at once. "Pierce says we have everything we need. The proffer. Tiffany's statement. The Voss surveillance package. He thinks we walk in, present, and let the federal weight do the work."
"And the merger?"
"On hold until after the hearing."
"Six thousand jobs."
"Six thousand jobs."
I watch him pace. He stops in front of the window, hand braced on the frame, shoulders so tight they look painful. He's already-lost terrified, the way only fathers get.
My hands press flat against the table.
Just for a second. Long enough for my knuckles to go white. I can feel the hearing in my chest, a tight cold pressure that has nothing to do with the contract or the money. It has to do with a six-year-old on a dock right now talking to a duck.
Graham stops pacing.
He looks at my hands on the table. He crosses to me in three strides and covers them with one of his, large and warm and steady. He doesn't say anything. He just presses down, and the pressure moves through me like a current finding ground.
I take one breath. Then I pull myself together.
"Thank you," I say, quiet.
He squeezes once. Lets go. Straightens. We are back in the room with the coffee and the forty-eight hours.
"Graham. Come here."
He comes. I stand and meet him halfway and put my hands on his face. His skin is cool beneath my palms despite the warm room. His pulse is going too fast in his neck.
"Listen to me. You are going to walk into that courtroom tomorrow and you are going to win. Not because the deck is fair. Not because the judge is honest. Because you have earned this."
"They have a binder full of arrests and a stolen psychiatric file."
"You have a six-year-old who wants to feed the ducks.
You have a wife who tore up her contract in her head three weeks ago.
You have a former protégé who confessed that he wanted you smaller and could not, in the end, make it happen.
You have me, and Iris, and Pierce, and Voss, and a dozen other people who are not going to let a bridge-club judge hand your daughter to people who think love is a tax shelter. "
He closes his eyes. I feel him swallow under my palms.
"We are going to win. Say it back to me."
"We are going to win."
"Like you mean it."
"We are going to win."
"Better."
The faintest ghost of a smile pulls at his mouth. He puts his hands over mine. "I love you."
"I know."
"Marry me again."
"You have to win first, Sterling."
"After."
"After."
He kisses me. Not hungry. Not desperate.
The kiss of a man going into a fight tomorrow who doesn't want to forget what he's fighting for.
When he pulls back, the cool is gone from his skin.
His pulse has slowed. He's not okay, but he's a man who can be in the same room as the next forty-eight hours.
He rests his forehead against mine. His hands settle at my waist, anchoring.
"I keep thinking about what happens if she rules against us. I have run that scenario fifteen times since six this morning. I cannot make it land. I cannot picture this house without her in it."
"Then don't picture it. Picture her here at lunch. Picture Greg accepting her apology. Picture the next forty-eight hours one hour at a time."
"One hour at a time."
"One hour."
He breathes out. Uneven on the way out, steady on the way back in. I feel the moment his shoulders drop by a single degree.
"Pierce will be here at ten."
"I'll have Iris at the dock with Voss until eleven, then home for lunch. We can prep through her nap."
"What would I do without you."
"You'd be an extremely well-dressed disaster, Graham. We've been over this."
He laughs, just once, and walks out toward his study.
I stand in the kitchen after he's gone.
The quiet has its own weight. I press my palm flat against the counter and think: forty-eight hours. We have faced worse odds than forty-eight hours. Between us we have burned through worse fires than an emergency motion and a panicking judge.
The thought settles somewhere in my chest and stays there.
Iris bangs through the back door, holding two acorns up like trophies.
"Jade! Greg accepted my apology. He took the bread directly from my hand. He's still a little mad about the small duck but he said we can work on it."
"That's a very brave duck. Or a very stupid one."
"He's brave."
"Then we'll respect him for his bravery."
She hugs my waist. I stroke her hair and look out the window at the lake, where the morning sun is finally cutting through the cloud cover.
Forty-eight hours.
We can do anything if we keep doing it together.