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Grace’s grip on Adelaide’s arm was crushing. “What has he done?” she whispered, panic rising.
The older woman’s gaze was cold as she stared at her brother. “He gave the defense grounds for an insanity plea.” She disengaged Grace’s clenched fingers from her arm. “I’m sorry, Grace. He just saved your father’s life.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Why?” Grace screamed, the single word so full of betrayal she could hardly pronounce it. “Why? Why?”
“Grace, please, don’t shout,” Thornhollow said.
“Let her shout, Melancthon,” Adelaide argued. “Let her bring down the whole inn around your ears and you’d deserve every splinter driven into your traitorous skin.”
“I would not,” Thornhollow said. “I was under oath. It was my word—mine—that would send a man to his death, and I could not let that be.”
“He’s not a man,” Grace choked. “He’s a monster—you said so yourself. You knew what you were doing, Doctor. You knew and you said the words anyway.”
“Yes, I did. Grace, please. Listen to me.” He held out his hands as he crossed the room toward her. “I wanted to see him dead, I swear. But when I examined him as ordered by the court I couldn’t see it through.”
He reached for her, one hand resting on her shoulder as she quivered with rage. “He is mad, Grace. A lifetime of unmitigated power has left his mind skewed and warped. He truly believes that he can do no wrong, building on false logic to legitimize any action, no matter how heinous, as long as he wants it to be so. He’s a spoiled child, Grace, with the appetites of a man, who answers any questioning of his actions with ‘Because I want to.’
“I’ve seen people do horrible things, Grace. You yourself know the depth one can sink to when distanced from emotion. But in your father I see not a chasm between the man and his feelings but simply man and chasm joined as one. There is no empathy for him to draw upon when he sees another in pain. Society regards those who are insane as less than human, and in his case I could nearly agree as he has lost all qualities that would deem him human.
“Before you rage at me, before you renounce everything we’ve worked toward and any claim I may have on your friendship, consider his actions through this lens. My lens. The one I view life through, in which I have taken the responsibility for the mad on my shoulders. I speak on their behalf, Grace, always. And I saw a madman in front of me when I questioned your father. It’s a madness so discreet that it can walk the streets and be applauded in some circles, but it is madness nonetheless.”
Grace closed her eyes against his words. There had been no shame in her father, ever. Never in all the times he’d left her room had he been anything but confident and satisfied. He had wanted something and had taken it, needing no more reason than that to defile his daughter.
Grace shook her head, the shadow of his betrayal still upon her. “It is not my place to pick and choose the mad that you defend. But I cannot agree that he is among them. If it’s childish reasoning that brings him to his actions, it is reasoning all the same. A child learns the difference between right and wrong, and violating that is exactly what brings him pleasure. He knows what he does, Doctor. He knows and revels in the doing.”
“I cannot agree, Grace,” Thornhollow said. “If I am to have any faith in humanity whatsoever, I must believe that no man could do what he has done to you and be in his right mind.”
“What will happen to him?” Adelaide asked.
“Atkinson will jump at the chance to use my testimony to plead insanity. Elizabeth turned the jury soundly against your father, the description of his birthmark the nail in that particular coffin. I’ll recommend he be remitted to the Wayburne Lunatic Asylum of Boston, under the care of Doctor Heedson.”
“At least there will be a familiar face,” Grace said, her mouth twisting as she saw his logic. She knew those halls, knew the dispassion of those within them. Her father’s emptiness would be met with the same, his infection treated with nothing as his apathy met with like. There would be darkness too, a pitch to match his sins that had paraded for so long in the light.
“A rather fit punishment for both of them, I thought,” Thornhollow said, with a ghost of a smile. “Regardless, you are safe, I promise you. And your sister as well. You need never see that man’s face again.”
“Except I want to, Dr. Thornhollow,” Grace said. “And I want him to see mine.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
She slipped into the courthouse the next evening in her widow’s reeds, Adelaide by her side. They pushed against the tide of the crowd that milled outward, disappointed in such an anticlimactic ending to the trial.
“Excuse us, excuse us,” Adelaide said repeatedly, a pie plate raised above her head. Grace linked arms with her so that they wouldn’t be separated, finally climbing the steps to the double doors where the last of the thrill seekers had gathered to rehash the day’s events.
“Whew,” Adelaide said, inspecting her plate. “The pie made it.”
“You’re sure this will work?” Grace asked.
“The pie? No, I bought the cheapest I could find. But people like to talk about themselves, if you give them the opening. Just follow my lead.”
They went into the courthouse, the air still redolent with the accumulated breaths of so many. Adelaide pushed the double doors of the courtroom open, and they saw only the bailiff shutting the door to the holding cells behind him.
“Hello.” She waved, confidently making her way up the aisle. “We’re from the Federation of Women’s Clubs, here to bring a little something to the poor senator.”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” the bailiff said, straightening his shoulders. “I can’t allow that.”
“Nonsense,” Adelaide said, with a flick of her hand. “It’s just a pie. We heard that the man is quite insane, and even if that’s the case he’s still a senator, isn’t he?”
