I square my shoulders. If he wants to play hard, I’m ready.
After all—I’m wearing my lipstick.
“It’s nothing I’ve volunteered. Teachers don’t normally sit around the break room talking about their sex lives. But it’s nothing I hide, either.”
“Don’t you think parents have a right to know what sort of guidance their children are getting?” He absolutely sneers the wordguidance.
“They don’t seem to be complaining.”
“Do you ever talk about sex with these teens?”
“If they bring it up. Some kids come to me because of relationship problems. Some of them have even disclosed to me that they might be gay.”
“So you’re recruiting these innocent teenagers to your lifestyle?” Preston says.
“Not at all. But I am offering them a safe place where they can talk when other people”—I pause for effect—“are not being particularly tolerant.”
“Ms. Shaw, you testified on direct examination that you believe you’re a fit and proper parent for a child, is that right?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You’re saying there’s nothing about you that suggests, for example, an inability to cope?”
“I don’t believe so . . .”
“I’d like to remind you that you’re under oath,” the lawyer says.
What the hell is he getting at?
“Isn’t it a fact that you were hospitalized for a week in 2003 in the Blackstone Hospital psychiatric ward?”
I go very still. “A relationship had ended. I voluntarily checked myself in for a week to deal with the stress. I was put on medication and have not had another episode like that.”
“So you had a nervous breakdown.”
I lick my lips and taste the wax of the cosmetics. “That’s an exaggeration. I was diagnosed with exhaustion.”
“Really? That’s all?”
I lift my chin. “Yes.”
“So it’s your testimony that you did not try to kill yourself?”
Zoe’s hand is pressed to her mouth.Hypocrite,she must be thinking, after last night.
Turning to Wade Preston, I meet his gaze. “Absolutely not.”
He holds out his hand, and Ben Benjamin leaps up from the plaintiff’s table to give him a file. “I’d like to have these marked for identification only,” Preston says, handing them to the clerk for a stamp and then giving a copy to Angela and another to me.
They are my medical records from Blackstone.
“Objection,” Angela says. “I’ve never seen this evidence before. I don’t even know how Mr. Preston could have legally obtained them, since they’re protected by HIPAA—”
“Ms. Moretti is welcome to follow along with her own copy,” Preston says.
“Your Honor, under our confidentiality statute, I should have received three weeks notice of this prior to the records being subpoenaed. Ms. Shaw is not even a party to this action. There’s no way these records should be admissible in this courtroom.”
“I’m not entering these records as evidence,” Preston says. “I’m just using them to impeach the witness who has testified falsely under oath. Since we are talking about a potential custodial parent, I think it’s critical to know this woman is not just a lesbian—she’s also a liar.”
