Chương 4
“What happens if I say yes?”
“The process depends on what law enforcement documents and what a judge approves. An advocate can help you complete the request. It may restrict contact and require him to stay away from you.”
“From Alder House?”
“Potentially.”
“It’s his house.”
“That doesn’t decide whether you can be protected there.”
“I don’t want to stay there.”
“Then the order can identify another protected address without disclosing it publicly, depending on the court’s procedures.”
Claire rubbed the edge of the hospital blanket between her fingers.
Nathaniel’s attorneys would know how to challenge it. His family would know how to describe it. Claire could already hear his mother saying that temporary orders were granted when judges had only one side of the story.
Julian had once said the law was often forced to act before certainty arrived. At the time, they had been discussing a newspaper case over Christmas dinner. Claire had admired the calm intelligence of the sentence.
Now it sounded like a threat.
“I want to think.”
Tasha handed her a card without pressing it into her palm. “Thinking is allowed.”
When Julian and Mara returned, Mara carried three coffees and a paper cup of tea for Claire. She had forgotten Claire had stopped drinking caffeine after noon because it kept the baby active at night.
Claire accepted it anyway.
Julian sat down. “Lena called.”
Tasha looked at Claire. “Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
Julian noticed the answer. He did not object.
“The local police are securing the recording system,” he said. “Nathaniel consented to a limited review of the library footage after his attorney arrived.”
“Why would he consent?”
“His attorney may believe the recording supports his account.”
“Does it?”
Julian’s gaze moved briefly toward Tasha.
“Tell me.”
“The investigators viewed enough to confirm that you did not fall on your own.”
Claire stared at the tea.
“What did it show?”
“He grabbed your wrist. You pulled away. He pushed you into the table.”
“Did it show last night?”
“No.”
“Then the bruise is my word against his.”
“Your word is evidence.”
Julian said it too quickly, with the certainty of a man accustomed to instructing juries on principles that ordinary life often ignored.
Claire laughed once. It hurt her face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Claire.”
“My word is evidence when it belongs to someone people want to believe.”
Julian looked as though she had struck him.
Tasha remained silent.
Mara stirred sugar into coffee she had already sweetened.
Julian leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “The footage also contains audio.”
Claire stopped rubbing the blanket.
“What did he say?”
“Lena would prefer to speak with you herself before I repeat details.”
“You already started.”
He looked toward the door. “He accused you of copying foundation records. He said you had no authority to interfere. He threatened to have you declared medically unfit to serve as a trustee.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
The contraction monitor registered a small rise.
The nurse appeared almost immediately, checked the tracing, and asked Claire to breathe slowly. The contraction passed.
When they were alone again, Julian said, “There’s more.”
“Of course there is.”
“He said after the baby was born, no one would listen to you.”
Mara covered her mouth.
Claire stared at the green button hanging loose from Tasha’s cardigan. The thread had wound itself into a tiny gray knot.
Nathaniel had said those words. She remembered them now, though until Julian repeated them they had belonged to the blur of the argument. Nathaniel had been pacing beside the desk. His face had looked almost calm. She had felt more frightened by the calm than by the slap the night before.
After the baby is born, you’ll be tired, emotional, and medicated. Do you honestly think anyone will take your version of anything?
Then he had taken her wrist.
Claire closed her eyes.
The baby’s heartbeat continued, swift and indifferent.
The first time Nathaniel frightened her, he threw a crystal tumbler into the fireplace.
It happened three years into their marriage after a dinner with the trustees of the Vale Heritage Foundation. Claire had questioned a proposed transfer during dessert. The amount was small by the foundation’s standards, but the receiving company had been formed less than a month earlier and listed a post office box as its address.
At home, Nathaniel told her she had embarrassed him. Claire said the trustees had asked for questions. He said she knew what he meant.
The tumbler shattered against the stone behind her.
He apologized before the last piece stopped moving.
He cried in the bathroom, quietly enough that she had to stand outside the door to hear. He said he had become his father. He said he was ashamed. He said pressure was changing him into someone he did not recognize.
Claire spent the night comforting him.
The next morning, he sent flowers to her studio and arranged for the fireplace screen to be repaired. For months afterward, nothing happened. The absence of violence became evidence that the violence had not meant what it seemed to mean.
Later, there were doors slammed close enough to touch her hair. A hand around the back of her neck during arguments, not squeezing, just directing. A plate swept from a table. Her car keys placed somewhere she could not find them. A private joke repeated at dinner about Claire being forgetful.
The first slap came when she was twenty-six weeks pregnant.
Nathaniel had stared at his own hand afterward.
Claire remembered thinking that his shock proved she was safe.
She had become skilled at using his remorse against her own fear.
At ten that evening, the hospital discharged her with instructions to return for pain, bleeding, contractions, reduced movement, dizziness, or any new concern. Tasha arranged a room at a small hotel forty minutes away under a reservation that did not use Claire’s name.
Claire declined the protective order.
Julian argued only once.
May you like
“He has access to considerable resources.”
“So do you.”
