And even if I don’t have to reply out loud, I may just have already answered silently.
I don’t want to believe in a God who’d punish me for having an abortion.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t wondered if it’s true.
“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Angela asks the minute the judge says that we are adjourning for the day. “How did he get your medical files?”
“He didn’t have to,” I say flatly. “Max must have told him.”
“Then why didn’t you tellme? It would have been much less damaging if we’d been able to bring it up on direct instead of cross!”
Like Max’s alcoholism. Everyone likes a reformed sinner. If we’d been the ones to bring up his drinking, it would have looked like he had something to hide.
Which is exactly how Wade Preston has painted me today.
Preston has finished packing up his briefcase; he smiles politely as he walks by. “Sorry you didn’t know about the skeleton in your client’s closet. The literal one, that is.”
Angela ignores him. “Is there anything else I need to know about? Because Ireallydo not like surprises.”
I shake my head, still numb, and follow her out of the courtroom. Vanessa is waiting with my mother—both of them still sequestered. “Whathappenedin there?” Vanessa asks. “How come the judge threw out half the gallery?”
“Can we talk about it in the car? I really just want to go home.”
But the moment we open the front door of the courthouse and step outside, there is a hail and volley of questions.
I’m expecting this. Just not the ones they ask.
How far along were you when you had the abortion?
Who was the baby daddy?
Do you still keep in touch with him?
A woman walks up to me. From her yellow T-shirt I realize she is from Westboro Baptist Church. She’s holding a recyclable plastic bottle filled with some kind of fruit punch, but it looks like blood from here.
I know she’s going to throw it at me the moment before she actually does. “Some choices are wrong,” she cries.
I step back, shielding myself, so that the liquid only lands on my right foot. I completely forget about Vanessa until I hear her voice beside me. “You never told me.”
“I never told anyone.”
Vanessa’s eyes are cold. She glances at Max, walking between his attorneys. “Somehow,” she says, “I don’t believe you.”
My mother wants to go after Wade Preston for dragging up my history; it takes Angela’s interference and the magic word(grandchild)before she agrees to go home without putting up a fight. She tells me she will call me later to make sure I’m all right, but it’s pretty clear to her that I don’t want to talk right now. To anyone except Vanessa, that is. The whole ride home, I try to explain what happened during my testimony. She doesn’t say a word. When I mention my abortion, she flinches.
Finally, by the time we park the car, I can’t stand it. “Are you going to give me the silent treatment forever?” I yell, slamming the car door and following Vanessa into the house. I strip off my panty hose, which are still sticky. “Is this some Catholic thing?”
“You know I’m not Catholic,” Vanessa answers.
“But you used to be—”
“This isn’t about the damn abortion, Zoe. It’s aboutyou.” She is facing me now, her hands still clutching the keys to the car. “That’s a pretty big bit of history to leave out of a relationship. It’s like forgetting to tell someone you have AIDS.”
“For God’s sake, Vanessa, you can’t catch an abortion like an STD—”
“Do you think that’s the only reason to disclose something incredibly personal to the people you love?”
“It was a horrible decision to have to make, even if I was lucky enough to be able to make it. I don’t particularly enjoy reliving it.”
