Chapter 13 #3
He talked about dates for the better part of an hour.
He was never once unkind. In that mild, friendly drawl he walked Halston back through every one of them — that he and Ms. Akande had not spoken in fifteen years; that he had married her eleven days after the will was read to him; that he had moved her into his house the same afternoon he signed; that his press office had called it a private family decision the very next morning; that there existed, with Halston's own approval, a schedule setting public appearances at a minimum of two per month for the duration of the proceedings.
To every one of them Halston said yes. Mason had warned him it was coming.
Mason had told him: he will lay every cold fact in a row, and then he will ask you to argue with the row.
Do not argue with the row. The row is true.
So Halston did not argue with the row.
Near the end of it Whittaker set down his legal pad, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at the witness almost kindly.
"A man does not usually put his marriage on a calendar, Mr. Iverson. A will told you to marry, and eleven days later you did, and then you booked the photographs by the month. That is not a love story. That is an arrangement."
"Is that a question," Halston said.
"Was it an arrangement, Mr. Iverson. Yes or no."
"It started as one. Yes."
Whittaker waited — the way a good lawyer waits, for the witness to keep talking and make it worse.
Halston did not. He sat with his healed hand flat on the ledge and said nothing further, and after a moment it was Whittaker who had to break the silence.
"Nothing further, your honor."
Halston stepped down and returned to the respondent's table. He sat beside Aurora and laid his hand over hers on the table.
He did not need to whisper anything to her. She knew.
Mason called Aurora next.
She walked the six paces to the stand, took the oath, sat, then put her hands on the ledge.
Mason asked her name, profession, and her relationship to the deceased. He asked her how she had come to be married.
Then he asked her one question.
“Mrs. Iverson. Why are you fighting for this child.”
Aurora looked at Imari's grandmother across the courtroom.
She did not look at Geraldine the way she had been planning to look at her. She did not look at her with contempt or anger. She looked at her, and she said, evenly:
"Your honor, my best friend in the world was Maeve Larkin.
I met her when I was thirteen years old, and from that day she was the sister I never had.
We grew up together. I held her hand in the labor room when Imari was born, because Maeve's husband fainted and so I have known Imari Larkin since the morning she came into this world.
She is not, with respect, only my goddaughter, she is part of me just like Maeve is.
She knows me, she feels safe with me and I will raise her like she is my own, the way Maeve would have.
I am fighting for her because she has lost both her parents, and the only home she has ever known, she has been put through more in two months than any eight-year-old should be asked to bear — and I am not, your honor, willing to let her world be turned upside down again.
I will fight for her, for what Maeve and Cyrus set out as their dying wish for their child.
The judge had been writing, she stopped and looked at Aurora over the top of her glasses for a long moment. Aurora did not look away.
“Thank you, Mrs. Iverson.”
Whittaker did not cross-examine her.
She returned to her seat at the respondent's table. Halston took her hand.
Mason rested his case.
Judge Pomfret looked down at her notes for a long moment.
Then she lifted her head.
“Counsel,” she said, “before I rule. I am told that the minor child is not present in this courtroom today. Is that correct?”
“Yes, your honor,” Mason said.
“By whose decision?”
“By both parties, your honor. The respondents agreed before today that the child would not be brought into this proceeding regardless of what the petitioners chose to do. She is at home in Pinewood Hollow with her caregiver.”
“Mr. Whittaker.”
“We did not request her presence, your honor.”
“I am going to ask now that she be brought to the courthouse. I would like to hear from the child. I am not going to put her on the stand, instead I will speak to her in my chambers, with both counsels present, and I am going to ask her three questions. Will the respondents permit this.”
Aurora's hand tightened in Halston's.
Halston looked at Mason. Mason nodded once at Halston.
Halston stood.
“Yes, your honor. With our consent.”
*****
Halston’s driver drove Yvette and Imari into Houston in the small black Lexus, and Imari, clutching Archie, walked into Judge Pomfret's chambers an hour and twenty minutes later.
She had been told, by Aurora in the car, that the judge was a very nice lady who was going to ask her some easy questions, and that she should answer them honestly and that nobody was going to be angry at her no matter what she said.
She nodded.
She had been very quiet on the drive.
Judge Pomfret met Imari at the door of her own chambers. She had taken off her robe and was in a white blouse and dark gray trousers. She crouched down on her knees to Imari's height in the carpeted doorway and held out her hand.
“Hi, Imari. I'm Henrietta. May I say hello to your friend.”
Imari held out the Squishmallow.
“This is Archie.”
“Hello, Archie. Has Archie been to a court before.”
“No. It's his first time. Mine too.”
“Well there is absolutely nothing to worry about.
Will you come sit on this couch with me.
We're going to chat for a few minutes. Your Aunt Rory, Mr. Halston, your grandparents, Mr. Whittaker and Mr. Whitcroft are all going to be sitting in the chairs over there. They are not allowed to talk while you and I talk. All right. Just pretend that they are not in the room.”
“All right.”
Imari sat on the small leather couch beside the judge.
She set Archie on her lap.
Judge Pomfret asked her three questions.
The first was, “Where is your home, Imari?”
Imari thought about it for a careful second.
She said, “Pinewood Hollow.”
“With?”
“Aunt Rory, Mr. Halston, Miss Yvette and the goldens.”
“Is that where you want to live?”
“Yes.”
The second question was, “When you go to bed at night, Imari. Who do you want to read to you.”
“Mr. Halston.”
“Why?”
“Because his Piggie voice is bad. But he is trying. He practices when I am not there. Mr. Halston practices.”
The judge smiled.
“And when you wake up in the morning, sweet pea. Who do you want to be in the kitchen?”
“Aunt Rory. Because Aunt Rory lets me put extra cinnamon on the cinnamon toast.”
“All right, Imari. One last question. If a stranger, somebody you have never met, came up to you on the street and asked you where your family was. What would you tell them?”
Imari did not think about this one.
She looked up at Judge Henrietta Pomfret with Maeve's hazel eyes and Cyrus Larkin's brown skin and her dead mother's clear small certain voice.
“I would tell them they are my family,” she said, pointing at Halston and Aurora. “Aunt Rory said. They are my family now.”
The judge nodded once, very gently.
“Thank you, sweetheart. Mr. Whittaker, Mr. Whitcroft. Off the record. Let's go back to the courtroom. Imari, Errol and Ayanna are going to take you and Archie out for ice cream. Mr. Halston and Aunt Rory are going to come back in with the rest of us.”
*****
The judge ruled from the bench.
She did not deliberate or call a recess. Judge Henrietta Pomfret looked down at the Larkins' table and she said, in a voice that did not raise above conversational:
“Mr. and Mrs. Larkin, your petition is denied. The marriage of Halston and Aurora Iverson is a valid marriage. The guardianship of Imari Larkin stands. The adoption proceeding will continue under the terms set forth in the will. I would like to add, off the record but on the strong suggestion of this bench, that you have lost a son and a daughter-in-law and you are in the process of losing a granddaughter, and that the granddaughter has, at the age of eight, made it abundantly clear who her family is. I encourage you, sincerely, to find a way to be a smaller part of that family rather than no part of it. That is the recommendation of this bench. Court is adjourned.”
Geraldine Larkin's mouth opened.
She did not say anything.
Roderick Larkin laid his hand over his wife's on the table. He stood up, drew her to her feet and led her out of the courtroom without one further word.
Whittaker packed his briefcase and left without acknowledging either of them.
Aurora and Halston walked out of the courthouse onto the sidewalk on Main Street into the late morning light.
Errol and Ayanna were waiting at the bottom of the marble steps with Imari between them with a half-finished ice cream in one hand and Archie clamped under the other arm. The moment Imari saw their faces, she knew. She pulled free of Ayanna's hand and came up the steps at a run.
Aurora caught her, lifted her and held on.
“Aunt Rory.” Imari's face was an inch from hers. “Do I get to stay with you?”
“Forever, sweet pea.” Aurora's voice broke clean in half. “Nobody is taking you anywhere. You're staying with us. For good.”
And then it hit Halston too. For the first time since the will reading two months ago, the careful control went out of his face all at once.
He laughed — short, disbelieving, almost a sob — and wrapped both arms around Aurora and Imari together, the three of them, on the courthouse steps in the late August Houston sun.
“She's ours,” he said into Aurora's hair. “She's ours. Nobody is taking her anywhere.”
Errol came up the steps to them, Ayanna a half step behind with both hands pressed to her own mouth. Without a word, Errol took his son-in-law's right hand and gripped it in both of his own.
“Congratulations, son,” he said quietly. “Both of you. You did it.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”
Errol clapped him once on the shoulder and did not let go of his hand.
Aurora, in the arms of the man she had married because of a will and was still married to because of love, with her daughter on her hip and her whole family gathered on the courthouse steps, was, finally, home.