Wednesday. The Middlesex County Courthouse on Cambridge Street.
Institutional brick, white columns, a security checkpoint, and the smell of old carpet and recirculated air. Every courthouse smells the same.
This building makes me hate it on sight. My family treats courtrooms like obstacles. We build around them, under them, through them. Today I'm sitting on a bench in a hallway trusting one.
Maya is in the courtroom. The door is closed. Behind it, she is telling a judge what her father did to her when she was thirteen. My hands stay open on my knees because closing them will not help her in that room.
"You're bouncing your leg," Cole says beside me.
"I'm aware."
"You're also grinding your teeth."
"Aware of that too."
"I can hear it."
"Then stop listening."
His leg presses against mine. The contact deliberate. He leans back against the wall.
"She's going to be fine," he says.
"I know she's going to be fine. She's the strongest person in this building."
"Then why are you grinding your teeth?"
"Because I'm sitting in a hallway while someone I love describes the worst thing that ever happened to her and I am doing nothing about it."
"You're doing what she asked."
"She asked me to sit."
"So sit."
I sit, and the hours pass. By the second hour, I know the hallway by heart: the water fountain that drips, the crack in the plaster above the courtroom door, the particular way fluorescent light turns skin gray. The inner circle arrives in waves—Adrian and Clara first, then Declan and Talia, Gio pacing three steps left and three steps right, Zoë on the bench, cross-legged, and Genny by the window. She's been standing since she arrived.
Suzanne went in with Richard earlier. When we file in, she's in the front row of the courtroom, Richard beside her. Suzanne in a dark blazer, her hands clasped in her lap, her spine straight enough to make the chair look weak.
Adrian looks up from across the hallway, catches my eye, and nods once.
The bailiff opens the door.
"The court will reconvene for the ruling in Courtroom B."
We file in, two rows, and I take the aisle seat, second row, Cole beside me.
The side door opens. Maya walks in and takes her seat at the table beside Richard. Dark blazer. Hair pulled back. Pale and dry-eyed after four hours in a chair telling a room full of strangers about broken ribs, a fractured arm, a concussion, internal bleeding, the injuries that put a thirteen-year-old girl in a hospital bed and her father in a cell.
She looks at the gallery, Suzanne first, the nod between them. Suzanne's hand lifts half an inch, then settles back into her lap.
Then her eyes move to us, Cole first for a beat, then me. My jaw is locked. My eyes burn. I gave up managing either hours ago.
Her eyes hold mine.
The judge returns. The courtroom settles.
David Ashford sits at the other table in a blazer and open collar, hands folded on the table. Cultured. Patient. Charming. He looks like someone's favorite professor. He looks like the kind of father who'd coach Little League.
