Chương 10
“It may feel awful,” she said.
“Excellent.”
“You’ll be asked about the relationship.”
“I know.”
“You may be asked why you stayed.”
“I know.”
“You may be asked about inconsistencies.”
“I know.”
Marisol looked at her over her glasses.
“Do you want me to keep going?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Emma folded and unfolded a receipt.
Marisol waited.
“I keep thinking there’s going to be one piece of evidence that makes everything simple.”
“There usually isn’t.”
“The video of the slap is simple.”
“That incident is simple.”
Emma understood the distinction.
The marriage was not.
Daniel’s attorney argued that the gala incident was isolated, that the couple’s relationship had been volatile on both sides, that Emma’s family had pressured her after a humiliating public argument, and that her evidence showed a troubled marriage rather than a pattern of deliberate abuse.
Some of those sentences were insulting.
Some were effective because they touched things Emma feared were partly true.
She and Daniel had argued.
She had screamed.
She had once thrown a glass.
She had told him she hated him.
She had gone back after the first time he shoved her.
Then again after the second.
She had lied to doctors.
She had lied to her mother.
She had posed for photographs beside him.
The story did not become less true because she had behaved badly inside it.
Learning that took longer than Emma expected.
The night before the hearing, she slept at her parents’ house for the first time since March.
Not because she wanted to.
Her apartment building’s fire alarm malfunctioned and management evacuated two floors while electricians worked on the system.
Ryan called it “the universe being unsubtle.”
Emma told him to shut up.
Her old bedroom had become Diane’s gift-wrapping room. Rolls of expensive paper stood in a ceramic umbrella holder beside the desk.
“You erased me for ribbon,” Emma said.
Diane looked horrified.
Emma smiled.
“I’m kidding.”
Her mother pressed a hand to her chest.
“You cannot do that to me right now.”
For the first time in weeks, they both laughed.
Later, Diane sat on the edge of the bed while Emma removed her earrings.
“Can I ask you something?”
Emma met her eyes in the mirror.
“Maybe.”
“Did you ever think I wouldn’t believe you?”
Emma set down an earring.
“Yes.”
Diane absorbed that.
“Because of the texts?”
“Before the texts.”
Her mother’s hands folded in her lap.
“Why?”
Emma looked back at the mirror.
There were many answers.
Because Diane loved peace.
Because she had spent decades making unpleasant truths look presentable.
Because she mistook politeness for goodness more often than she admitted.
Because Daniel called her every Sunday.
Because Emma had watched her mother forgive Richard for things simply because conflict exhausted her.
“Because you like people to be okay,” Emma said.
Diane frowned.
“That sounds like a good thing.”
“Not when they’re not.”
Her mother looked down.
Emma continued.
“You keep arranging the room so nobody has to look at what’s ugly.”
Diane rubbed one thumb along the seam of her gown bag hanging from the closet door.
“I thought that was what mothers did.”
“Maybe sometimes.”
Diane nodded.
After a while she said, “My mother did it too.”
Emma had not expected that.
“What?”
“She used to say, ‘Don’t give a bad day a permanent address.’”
“That sounds like something printed on a pillow.”
“It probably was.”
Emma smiled.
Diane did not.
“There were things she should have let become permanent,” she said. “Things we should’ve named.”
Emma waited.
Her mother shook her head.
“Not tonight. I’m not going to turn this into my childhood.”
That restraint was new.
Emma reached for her other earring.
Diane stood to leave.
At the door she stopped.
“I believed Daniel because believing him let me keep the picture I liked.”
Emma looked at her.
Diane’s eyes shone.
“I am going to be ashamed of that for a long time.”
Emma did not tell her she should not be.
“Okay,” she said.
The hearing room was smaller than Emma expected.
Daniel wore a dark suit, not the charcoal tuxedo from the gala. His hair was shorter. He looked rested.
Emma hated him for looking rested.
He did not turn when she entered.
That bothered her too.
For weeks she had dreaded his eyes on her.
Now that he refused to look, part of her felt erased.
She sat beside Marisol.
Claire sat behind them with Diane, Richard, and Ryan.
Ryan had been warned twice not to make faces.
He made one anyway when Daniel’s attorney opened a folder.
Emma saw Claire elbow him.
It nearly made her smile.
When Emma testified, her mouth went dry after the first five minutes.
The questions were not theatrical.
That made them harder.
Her lawyer asked how the relationship changed.
Emma described the first shove without describing Daniel as a monster.
He had been angry because she canceled dinner with his colleagues after a migraine started. She had called him selfish. He had blocked the doorway. She told him to move. He shoved her.
Then he apologized.
He cried.
Emma had never seen Daniel cry before.
He slept on the floor beside the bed because she would not let him touch her.
The next morning he brought coffee.
The coffee mattered.
She hated that it mattered.
She told the court anyway.
The second incident came months later.
Then apologies shortened.
Explanations lengthened.
Emma began measuring evenings by Daniel’s jaw, the way he closed cabinets, whether he loosened his tie before speaking.
She did not use the word terror.
She described sitting in the garage for twenty minutes because she saw his car home unexpectedly.
That was enough.
Daniel’s attorney asked about the broken wineglass.
“Yes,” Emma said. “I threw it into the sink.”
“You were angry.”
“Yes.”
“You told my client you hated him.”
“Yes.”
“You screamed at him.”
“Yes.”
“More than once?”
“Yes.”
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“Would you describe the marriage as mutually volatile?”
Emma looked at Daniel for the first time.
