Chương 13
“I think about it.”
He sat very still.
She continued before he could speak. “Not because I don’t love you. Because love was part of why I kept making myself smaller around your mother. I told myself it was a compromise. Then I told myself it was temporary. Then I stopped noticing when I was doing it.”
“I’ll never ask you to see her again.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can.”
“What happens when she gets sick?”
He had no answer.
“What happens when Brittany gets married?” Hannah asked. “Or your mother apologizes? Or Noah asks why he has a grandmother he’s never met? What happens when hating her becomes tiring?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
The refrigerator rattled.
Nineteen minutes.
Hannah looked toward the kitchen.
“It’s eighteen sometimes,” Ethan said.
She almost smiled.
Brittany contacted Hannah directly in October.
Her message was six lines long.
I am not asking you to forgive me. I am not asking to see Noah. I want to give a full statement at the protective-order hearing, but my lawyer says Diane’s attorney will bring up my panic disorder and say you pressured me. I need to know whether you want me there. I will follow your answer.
Hannah read it while Ethan washed bottles.
“What do you want to say?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t owe her anything.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“Sorry.”
Hannah set the phone face down.
“She called the ambulance.”
“Yes.”
“She also held me.”
“Yes.”
“She saved the videos.”
“After recording you without permission.”
“Yes.”
They stood in the kitchen with all the contradictions between them.
“What would you do?” Hannah asked.
“Tell her to testify.”
“Because she’s your sister?”
“Because she was there.”
“Would you want her back in your life afterward?”
Ethan rinsed soap from a bottle. “Part of me does.”
Hannah nodded.
He turned off the water.
“Part of me wants things to go back to before,” he said. “Not because before was good. Because I knew who I was in it.”
Hannah picked up the phone again.
“What are you now?”
“Unemployed in spirit. Temporarily employed in practice. Bad at laundry.”
“That shirt belongs to me.”
He looked at the small gray shirt he had folded with Noah’s clothes.
“It could fit him soon.”
“No, it couldn’t.”
The laugh came quietly this time.
Hannah replied to Brittany.
Tell the truth. Nothing else.
The protective-order hearing took place three months after the hospital confrontation.
By then Noah could lift his head for several seconds and had developed a furious dislike of hats. Hannah’s bruises had disappeared, though photographs remained in the court file. Ethan had completed his probationary period with Luis and enrolled the family in a health plan that cost more than their rent had once cost.
Diane entered the courtroom wearing cream.
The sight of the blouse stopped Hannah at the door.
“It isn’t the same one,” Ethan whispered.
“I know.”
He did not tell her to breathe. He had learned that telling a frightened person to breathe often meant asking them to hide the evidence of fear.
They sat behind their attorney. Noah remained with Gail in a nearby family room because Hannah did not want him inside.
Diane looked older than she had in the hospital. Her curls were less exact. She wore the gold necklace and earrings. Leonard Shaw sat beside her, arranging documents.
Brittany entered alone.
Diane turned toward her.
Brittany stopped walking.
For a moment, Ethan thought she might cross the room and sit beside their mother. Diane seemed to think so too. She moved her purse off the empty chair.
Brittany sat behind the prosecutor instead.
Diane’s face did not change, but her hand remained on the purse for several seconds.
The hearing concerned a long-term no-contact order, not the criminal charges. The judge listened to testimony about the restraint, the phone, the recordings, and Diane’s attempts to pressure Ethan through employment and housing.
Leonard emphasized Hannah’s threat to break a window.
“She was holding a six-day-old infant,” he said. “My client reasonably feared that Mrs. Carter might flee into the street in an impaired state.”
Hannah’s attorney asked Diane, “Did you know Noah’s temperature had been measured at one hundred point six degrees?”
“I knew Hannah claimed that.”
“Did you take the temperature yourself?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she had taken it incorrectly.”
“How did you know it was incorrect?”
“She used an underarm thermometer.”
“Was that thermometer provided in the discharge kit?”
Diane hesitated. “I don’t recall.”
The discharge records showed that it was.
“Did you call a doctor to ask whether the reading required evaluation?”
“Hannah had already called.”
“Did you allow her to keep the phone?”
“She was escalating.”
“That was not my question.”
“No.”
“Did you permit her to leave with the baby?”
“No.”
“Did you offer to take the baby to the hospital yourself?”
Diane looked at Ethan before answering.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I believed the danger was Hannah.”
The courtroom became very quiet.
The attorney let the answer remain.
Brittany testified after lunch.
Her voice shook through the first questions. Leonard asked whether she had ever been treated for panic attacks. She answered yes. He asked whether she feared criminal charges. Yes. Whether cooperating could reduce those charges. Possibly. Whether Hannah had told her what to say.
“No.”
“Did Hannah send you the message ‘Tell the truth’?”
“Yes.”
Leonard lifted the printed message. “Those were her exact words?”
“Yes.”
“Could you interpret that as pressure to support her version?”
Brittany looked at Hannah.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she added, ‘Nothing else.’”
“What did you understand that to mean?”
“That she did not want an apology. Or an excuse. Or a relationship. She wanted the truth.”
Leonard changed direction.
He asked Brittany to describe Hannah that morning. Brittany admitted Hannah was sweating, crying, and speaking rapidly. She admitted Hannah threatened to break a window. She admitted she feared Hannah might fall while holding Noah.
May you like
“Then you shared your mother’s concern?”
“At first.”
