Chương 8
“What medical information did she have?”
“Only what we told her.”
“Which was?”
“The early delivery. C-section. That you weren’t sleeping.”
“And hearing the baby?”
Daniel’s face changed.
“I told her.”
Emily’s stomach tightened.
“When?”
“Two days before the board meeting.”
“Why?”
“She asked how you were.”
“So you told her I was hearing things?”
“I told her you were exhausted and that one night you thought you heard him crying while I was holding him.”
Emily stood.
The chair scraped the floor.
Daniel closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
She walked toward the windows.
Snow had fallen overnight, soft and harmless.
Nothing like the blizzard.
“You gave her the weapon.”
“I didn’t know she’d use it.”
“That’s always your answer.”
Daniel looked up.
“What does that mean?”
“You didn’t know she’d come here. You didn’t know she’d use what you told her. You didn’t know I’d care about a deed. You don’t know because you make decisions before you ask anybody.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?”
“No.”
The word came sharper than he intended.
The baby moved in the bassinet.
They both lowered their voices automatically.
Daniel stood.
“I spent my entire life managing her.”
Emily folded her arms.
“I’m not her.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He stared.
Emily continued.
“You manage me too. Softer. Nicely. With presents and reservations and attorneys and solutions. But you still decide what information I need.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“I don’t care what you’re trying to do.”
He recoiled slightly.
She did not take it back.
“What are you asking me for?” he said.
“I’m asking you to stop knowing what’s best before I speak.”
Daniel looked down.
After a long silence, he said, “Okay.”
Emily almost laughed.
“That easy?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know how.”
That stopped her.
He sat again.
His shoulders had dropped.
“My father did it to everyone,” Daniel said. “He called it taking responsibility. My mother hated it when he did it to her. Then after he died, she started doing it to everyone else.”
Emily looked at him.
Daniel rubbed one thumb over the edge of the tablet.
“I thought I was different because I was nicer about it.”
“That’s a terrible defense.”
“I know.”
“No. Don’t say that.”
He stopped.
She crossed the room and sat opposite him.
“Ask me.”
“What?”
“What I want to do about the offer.”
Daniel breathed in.
Then out.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to reject it.”
“Okay.”
She glared.
He almost smiled.
“Sorry.”
“I want your opinion.”
His smile vanished.
“I think rejecting it makes the next few months harder.”
“Probably.”
“I think my mother will fight every factual point she can fight because if she accepts the story as it happened, she has to accept something about herself she doesn’t want to.”
Emily nodded.
“I also think the statement is dishonest.”
“Yes.”
“And I think signing something dishonest because it would make our lives easier would be exactly what she expects us to do.”
Emily sat back.
“That was almost a speech.”
“I’m working on it.”
She smiled despite herself.
They rejected the offer.
The hearing was not cinematic.
Nobody gasped.
Nobody pounded a table.
The courtroom was smaller than Emily expected, with beige walls and an American flag whose gold fringe had tangled around the pole.
Margaret sat with her attorney.
She wore navy instead of burgundy.
No brooch.
Emily noticed the absence immediately.
Daniel sat behind Emily but did not touch her unless she reached for him.
The security footage was discussed but not played like some dramatic revelation for a crowd. Attorneys had already reviewed it. The court had copies.
Emily answered questions.
Her voice shook once.
Margaret’s lawyer asked whether she had been experiencing significant sleep deprivation.
“Yes.”
Whether she had sought medical care after the incident.
“Yes.”
Whether she had experienced auditory misperceptions.
Emily’s attorney objected to the phrasing.
The judge redirected the question.
Emily felt Margaret watching her.
She could have minimized everything.
She could have denied the confusion.
Instead she told the truth.
“I was severely sleep deprived. One night I thought I heard my baby crying when he wasn’t. I told my husband because it scared me.”
Margaret’s lawyer nodded.
“And that was shortly before the evening in question?”
“Yes.”
“Did Mrs. Hale express concern for the baby?”
“Yes.”
Emily heard Daniel shift behind her.
The lawyer continued.
“So it is possible that her actions were motivated, at least partly, by concern?”
Emily looked at Margaret.
For the first time that morning, their eyes met.
Margaret’s face was composed.
But her left hand held the edge of the table too tightly.
Emily thought of the private nurse.
The baby bag.
The way Margaret had once driven through a snowstorm to bring Emily medication after the pharmacy near their apartment closed.
“Yes,” Emily said.
Daniel made a small sound behind her.
The lawyer paused.
Emily continued.
“I think she was concerned.”
Margaret’s fingers loosened.
“And that concern influenced her conduct?”
“Yes.”
The lawyer looked satisfied.
Then Emily said, “She was also trying to control what happened.”
The lawyer turned back.
Emily kept her voice steady.
“She could have called Daniel. She could have called my doctor. She could have called an ambulance if she thought the baby was in danger. She didn’t. She brought a luggage cart. She arranged a driver. She asked an employee whether my sister had room for me. She took my phone. She tried to make me leave the home with my newborn before my husband came back.”
Margaret closed her eyes briefly.
Emily looked at the judge.
“I don’t need anyone to decide whether she loves my son. I believe she does. I need her not to use that love as permission.”
There was no dramatic silence.
The court reporter kept typing.
Somebody in the hallway dropped a metal water bottle.
May you like
It clanged twice.
The judge eventually entered a longer no-contact order covering Emily and the baby while the related case proceeded, with specific exceptions possible only through counsel and later court approval.
