Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow you knew that if it disappeared, you would, too.
He wondered if the women who’d come to the Center thought differently.
Then, reconsidering, he imagined it wasexactlywhat they thought.
I’m here,he texted Wren, and he hoped that would be enough.
—
BETH STARED AT THE STRANGEman in her room. A cop. Not outside the door, but inside it, and watching her. It was creepy as fuck. As if it weren’t bad enough that she was handcuffed to the bed rail.
She wanted her father. She wished she could text him, apologize, cry, beg, but her phone had been taken away by the police. Was he in the hospital cafeteria, or taking a walk, or just sitting in his car and replaying the horrible things they had said to each other? Beth knew that if she could see his face, talk to him directly, she could make him see that nothing had changed; that she still needed him as much as, if not more than, before. She would spend a month in church with him, if he wanted, atoning for her sins. She would do anything to go back to the way it had been.
When the door opened, she turned, hope swelling. But she hadn’t conjured her father at all. It was a strange man in a suit, with a shock of dark hair. He was followed by a stenographer, who set up a machine in the corner near the radiator.
“Hello, Beth,” he said. “I’m Assistant District Attorney Willie Cork. How are you doing?”
She looked from this man to the cop, and then her eyes settled on the stenographer, a woman. When she was little and had to go pee, her father used to ask a woman to take her into the ladies’ room. He used to say if she ever felt like she needed help, she should find someone who looked like a good mother.
Which, she realized with a shock, disqualified Beth herself.
Maybe he was her lawyer. She had asked for one. She wasn’t quite sure how that worked. “Hello,” Beth said softly, and at that moment, the door flew open again and a small tornado cycled in. She was tiny and Black and the air crackled around her.
“Your pasty manhood might get you a pass in just about everything in this country, Willie, but even you know better thanthis. You don’t get to talk to my client without representation present.”
“Such a warm welcome, Counselor,” the ADA drawled. “Guess you’ve missed me.”
“Willie, when it comes to you, a tiny bit goes a long way. Like arsenic. Or nuclear fallout.” She glanced down at the hospital bed. “My name is Mandy DuVille, I’m your public defender. You’re Beth, yes?”
Beth nodded.
“Okay, Beth. Do not talk to anyone unless I’m present, understand?” She faced the prosecutor. “Why are you even here? Don’t you have bigger things to do? Like passing a bogus voter ID law or gerrymandering the districts before your next election…”
“Officer Raymond here called me down to the scene, and rightly so,” Willie Cork said. “I have never seen anything so disturbing in all my years serving Lady Justice. We had an arrest warrant within the hour.”
Mandy slid a glance toward the cop at the door. “Nathan,” she greeted.
“Cuz,” he said.
The prosecutor handed Mandy a file. “Knock yourself out,” he said, and Beth’s lawyer opened the folder and began to read, her eyes flying back and forth.
“Self-abortion,” Mandy read. “Pills?” Her lawyer snapped the folder shut and focused her gaze on Beth’s handcuffed wrist, awkwardly balanced on the rail. “She’s a child. Maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Is that really necessary?” she asked Willie.
“This woman is a murderer,” the prosecutor said.
“Allegedmurderer.”
Beth’s eyes darted from person to person. It was like they were playing tennis, and she was the ball being volleyed back and forth. She shifted, jingling the chain on her wrist. “I didn’t—”
“Stop talking,” Mandy interrupted loudly, holding up her palm. “Nathan,” she asked, “can I please lean over and whisper to my client for a moment of confidentiality?”
“That’s Officer Raymond to you,” Nathan said, “and no. You’ll stay two feet away from the defendant at all times.”
The public defender rolled her eyes. “Beth, I need you to tell me if you understand what the state is saying you did. Not whether or not you actually did it.”
Beth blinked at Mandy, utterly confused.
“Okay. I’m going to enter a not guilty plea on your behalf, and waive the bail argument until you’re released from here and transported to the prison.”
