He put his thirteen-year-old daughter in the hospital.
The judge reviews the evidence: the letters, the Chronicle visits, the documented days Ashford spent watching her, the parole violations. Richard's case is on the record. The surveillance data, my data, stripped of its source, sits there in the judge's file.
Ashford's attorney argues mitigating circumstances, reformed character, the desire to reconnect. The words the attorney deploys on Ashford's behalf:I just wanted to see her. I've changed. I'm her father.
The judge deliberates. Twelve minutes. The gavel comes down.
Parole revoked. Returned to custody. Effective immediately.
Two officers escort David Ashford from the courtroom. Maya watches him go, her hands flat on the table, until the door closes.
Then she stands and walks to Suzanne. They hold each other, brief and fierce, while Richard puts his hand on Maya's back.
Maya turns toward us.
The group is standing, all of them—Adrian, Clara, Declan, Talia, Gio, Zoë, Genny—on their feet in the aisle.
She walks past them, touching Genny's hand as she passes and nodding at Adrian, and keeps walking until the space between us is gone.
She stops six inches away, then puts her hands on my face, both palms on my jaw.
"It's done," she says.
She pulls me down and kisses me, hard and full, and she tastes like salt.
"Don't make me regret it," she says against my mouth.
"I won't."
"You might."
"Then I'll earn it back. Every time."
She turns to Cole and kisses him softer, and his arms come around her before she has to lean farther. He lifts her for half a second, her feet off the ground, and someone behind us, probably Zoë, makes a sound between a laugh and a cry.
Adrian's hand lands on my shoulder. One squeeze. Clara pulls Maya into a hug. Gio wraps an arm around Genny. She turns her face into his shoulder, her jaw tight.
"I have follow-up questions about the blazer," Zoë says.
Maya laughs, bright, the sound filling the courtroom.
We leave together, all of us, through the doors into the afternoon, cold and bright.
Maya stands on the top step, Cole on her left and me on her right. She takes our hands, one each, fingers interlacing.
Holding.
Elm House. After.
The courthouse clothes come off in stages—Maya's blazer over a chair, Cole's tie on the counter, my jacket on the hook.
The house is quiet for an hour. Maya upstairs, changing out of the courthouse clothes. Cole on the couch, still in his dress shirt, staring at the ceiling. Me at the kitchen table with coffee I don't drink. Ashford in custody. The gavel still echoing.
Maya comes downstairs in sweats and sits at her spot with tea, her hands around the mug. Cole makes eggs. The ritual. The three of us in the kitchen, eggs in the pan, tea in her hands, the court order sitting somewhere in Richard's files.
After twenty minutes, my shoulders loosen, and my jaw unclenches for the first time since Wednesday morning.
"He'll get out again," Maya says.
