Chapter 14
Holland
My sister Annie brings me a gray suit in a dry-cleaning bag.
Two hours here and two back. She doesn’t stay for the hearing because she has two kids and a husband who works shifts.
But she drove four hours to bring me a suit she knew I needed.
She’s the only family I have left after my brother’s death and, later, my parents’.
The suit’s a little wide in the shoulders, but I was so annoyed at the idea of buying one to show up in court that I kept putting it off.
The hearing’s at ten thirty, so I had to drop Lina at Tessa’s at nine, with her school backpack and the promise that I’d pick her up for dinner.
The second we got there, Wesley opened the door and dragged her inside without asking anything.
I guess that’s exactly what the kid needs.
She knows nothing about the custody fight, though these days she can tell I’m a little tense.
Last night, after I put her to bed, my lawyer called. He told me that if I painted Megan as a mother who’s never cared about her daughter, which is exactly what it looks like on paper, the case would win itself.
I told him no. I thought about it a good while sitting on the edge of the bed, and I told him no.
Lina still calls her mama Megan. She loves her in her own way, even though she’s gone practically four years without seeing her and barely remembers when she lived with us.
To my daughter she’s still her mother, and I’m not going to sit in a room, forty minutes from where Lina’s playing with Wesley, and paint her as a monster.
My lawyer sighed on the phone and told me that if that was my decision, it was fine, but he warned me we were running more risk.
At the courthouse, he comes in with the forty-two letters. Pages and pages of ordinary people writing by hand that they know Holland Callow and think she’s a good mother.
Megan arrives with Grant. I recognize him from the photo David found on the website of his law firm, Harding & Webb. She’s thinner and wears her hair differently, and for a second, before I remember everything that happened, I almost want to hug her.
Then, seeing the look on both her face and her husband’s, it passes.
They talk about stability, about the security of growing up in a home with two adults with good financial resources. They rave about a private school in Richmond, about a house with a pool where she can bring her new friends whenever she wants.
They talk about me while barely naming me: single mother, volunteer coach, high school teacher with a modest salary.
They add a partner who’s constantly changing teams and has a somewhat volatile public profile.
They paint it all so perfect that, for an instant, even I believe it.
Damn. It almost sounds good put that way.
My lawyer answers with our boring truth.
He pulls out the calendar of Natalia’s practices with the girls, the statements from the team moms, the pediatrician’s report.
And then he starts reading some of the letters, not all of them.
Six or seven. Small things, no drama, no great feats.
Things that happen in the day-to-day of any normal family.
The judge listens with her glasses on the tip of her nose and turns pages.
There’s no big moment. That’s the idea. Four years of everyday life against nothing but nice words.
And then the judge sets her glasses on the table and looks at Megan, not at the lawyer.
“Ms. Harding, one question. Why now?”
Megan has it ready. You can tell by how she starts, by the sentence that comes out round and well rehearsed.
“I’ve matured,” she says. “I always wanted to be part of her life, but circumstances kept me from it,” she adds.
But the judge doesn’t take her eyes off her, and Megan keeps losing her confidence. She starts a sentence and leaves it half finished. She says something about Grant and stops.
“I couldn’t start from scratch,” she says at last, and now it doesn’t come out so rehearsed.
She’s left with her mouth a little open, like the sentence betrayed her on the way out. She doesn’t finish explaining it. She just sits there, not entirely sure whether what she just said is good or bad.
“I’ll take the case under advisement,” the judge says. “I’ll issue my decision in writing.”
And that’s it. It’s not like in the movies.
There’s no verdict. There’s a gavel that doesn’t even bang and people gathering folders, Grant putting a hand on Megan’s back to walk her out of the room.
My lawyer says in my ear that now we wait, and that waiting is the worst part, and that he’ll call me. I just nod.
***
I get to Crestview with Lina half asleep in the back seat.
Natalia’s waiting for me in the living room and sends my daughter off to brush her teeth.
“The back ones too,” she insists, and Lina protests and goes.
Then she comes to me, puts her hands on my waist, and rests her forehead against my temple. She stays quiet. She doesn’t ask how it went or what the judge said. She just holds me.
An hour later, with Lina asleep, she makes a tea neither of us really wants.
“I love you,” I sigh, taking her hand in both of mine. “Today was one of the worst days of my life, and the only thing I wanted while I drove was to come home and have you waiting for me.”
“I love you too,” she answers, leaning in to kiss me.
We cry a little, both of us, holding each other, with two cups of tea nobody’s going to drink.