Where was Forrest’s lawyer now? Wasn’t this a moment for him to object?
“I’ll remind you again that you’re under oath here. There are serious consequences for lying in a court of law.” The prosecutor stood in front of the witness box, but in such a way that the jury could see her, shaking her head. “Were you in love with Forrest Emerson, Frances?”
“Yes,” I told her. I could have addedI still love him. Just not the way you think.But I left it at that.
“And did Forrest Emerson ever suggest that your feelings were reciprocated?”
There had been that day we sat together by the lake, after he broke things off with Brenda. He’d put his arm around me. And so many other times, too, that had meant the world to me. It wasn’t just the words he said. It was how he treated me.
“You don’t understand,” I said. Even I could hear the tone of pleading in my voice.
The previous summer, when I learned about Forrest’s affair, I had come to believe that I never mattered to him after all. But I knew now that Forrest actually did love me. In a different way from how I’d described in my journal, was all. A more precious way, actually. More real.
That’s when our eyes met in the courtroom, Forrest’s and mine. Just for a moment. He nodded almost imperceptibly. You couldn’t call the expression I saw on his face one of happiness, but I saw kindness there. Other than Jonathan, he was the only person I could find in the courtroom that day displaying any sign of true kindness. They were the only ones on the planet, possibly.
I didn’t dare smile at him, but the faint trace of a smile passed over Forrest’s lips. He closed his eyes as if what he saw now was something he’d prefer not to behold. His future.
Now came the part none of us could have anticipated. As terrible as things were, I didn’t know yet they could get worse.
The DA having set forth, through the testimony of Brenda Barnett, a scenario in which Forrest Emerson could have held out no hope of a future with her, the question hung in the air: Why, then, would Forrest Emerson have killed his wife? There was still the motive of the insurance money, of course. But the DA chose to go further. Having worked to establish the portrait of Forrest as a man obsessed with sex, she evidently wanted to portray him as setting his sights on a new relationship, now that Brenda had rejected him. Once he’d gotten his ailing and demanding wife out of the way.
This was when Vivian Latournier turned back from addressing the jury and faced me again, pointing her finger directly at my heart.
“Is it not possible, Frances, that you saw yourself as having a future with Forrest Emerson?” she asked me. “The man whose wife had entrusted you with the care of their two young children just weeks before? You thought if she was out of the way, you could replace her? Isn’t it possible that Forrest Emerson encouraged you to believe this, by telling you he loved you?”
No. No. No. No.I wanted to say the words, but none came out.
“You stated on record that Forrest Emerson has a tattoo on his left buttock. What kind of a man displays his naked body to a fourteen-year-old?” she demanded.
“It wasn’t like that—” I said.
Now Vivian Latournier started to read from my journal again—words I’d forgotten until now, written sometime early in the summer, after that boat ride together probably, describing a picture of Forrest and me, some unspecified date in the future, when the children wereoff at boarding school maybe, and Regina simply ... gone. A fantasy featuring the two of us heading out to the island on the boat, his arms around me as I took the wheel.
Then came another of my journal entries, written late in the night, a time—one of the many—when I’d felt frustrated by Regina’s endless demands.
“If I never see her again after this summer, I won’t miss her. She’s always talking about killing herself. Sometimes I wish she’d do it.”
“Perhaps there were two people who wanted Regina Emerson dead that summer,” the DA said. “Her husband was one. Weren’t you the other?”
Up until this moment, Forrest had been sitting quietly at the table next to his attorney, listening to the testimony without apparent bitterness or rancor, making notes occasionally. But when the DA spoke these words, Forrest rose up out of his chair and shook his fist.
“For god’s sake, let her alone,” he said. He didn’t yell, but the anger in his voice was almost frightening. You might even describe it as murderous. In my whole life, nobody had ever stood up for me as Forrest Emerson did at that moment.
“Frances didn’t do anything,” he said. “She’s just a kid. It’s all my fault. Everything. If it wasn’t for me, my wife would be alive today.”
98
Life
The verdict was guilty. First degree.
I wasn’t in the courtroom when they sentenced him. Life in prison with the possibility of parole with good behavior after thirty-five years.
Jilly and Hayward went to live with their grandparents. Age seven was a little young for this, but the moment Jilly reached fourth grade, I gather, the Cabots shipped her off to the same school in England where members of the royal family send their children. Hayward was there already.
It was over a decade later when I got a letter from Prudence, filling me in on more recent developments. By this point, Jilly was off to Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Hayward had attended his grandfather’s Ivy League alma mater—his admission secured, perhaps, by a donation that made possible the construction of the Cabot Center for Business Studies.
Hayward had dropped out of college, but he had gotten a job on Wall Street through some family friend, where he made a lot of money. He had a lot of money already, of course.
