Tonight, the blues just came out angry and all wrong. I switched to Brahms, something more soothing, but it didn’t help in the least. My pianissimo sounded forte, and my arpeggios were like boots clomping up and down stairs.
I finally stopped midphrase, hands over the keys.
In the silence, I heard the sharp intake of my own breath, an involuntary gulp of air.
What if I lose Little Alex?
Chapter 32
NOTHING COULD BE WORSE than this, nothing I could imagine.
A few days later, we all flew out to Seattle for Alex’s custody hearing. The whole Cross family went west again. No vacation this time, though, not even a short one.
The morning after we arrived, Jannie, Damon, and Nana sat quietly behind me on the courtroom benches as we waited for things to get started. Our conversation had dropped off to a tense silence, but having them there meant even more than I would have thought.
I straightened the papers in front of me for about the tenth time. I’m sure I looked fine to everyone, but I was a wreck inside, all hollowed out.
Ben Abajian and I were seated at the respondent’s table on the left side of the room. It was a warmly appointed but impersonal space, with honey-colored wood veneer on the walls and standard-issue contemporary furniture.
There were no windows, not that it mattered. Seattle was showing off its dark, rainy side that morning.
When Christine came in, she looked very fresh and put together. I’m not sure what I expected, maybe some outward indication that this was as hard for her as it was for me. Her hair looked longer, pulled back in a French braid. Her navy suit and gray high-collared silk blouse were more conservative than I was used to with her—and more imposing. She looked as if she could be another lawyer in the room. It was perfect.
Our eyes met briefly. She nodded my way, without showing any emotion. For a second, I flashed onto a memory of her looking at me across the table at Kinkead’s, our old favorite dinner spot in D.C. It was hard to believe these were the same eyes meeting mine in this courtroom, or that she was the same person.
She said a brief hello to Jannie, Damon, and Nana. The kids were reserved and polite, which I appreciated.
Nana was the only one to be somewhat hostile. She stared at Christine all the way to the petitioner’s table.
“So disappointing,” she muttered. “Oh, Christine, Christine, who are you? You know better than this. You know better than to cause harm to a child.”
Then Christine turned back and looked at Nana, and she seemed afraid, something I’d never seen in her before.
What was she afraid of?
Chapter 33
MS. BILLINGSLEY SAT on Christine’s left, and Ben was on my right, blocking our view of each other. That was probably a good thing. I didn’t want to see her right now. I couldn’t remember ever being so mad at anyone before, especially not someone I had cared for. What are you doing, Christine? Who are you?
My mind whirred as the hearing began and Anne Billingsley went into her slickly rehearsed opening statement.
It wasn’t until I heard the phrase “born in captivity” that my focus really snapped into place. She was talking about the circumstances of Little Alex’s birth, after Christine had been kidnapped while we were on vacation in Jamaica, the beginning of the end for us.
I began to see that Billingsley was every bit the viper Ben had made her out to be. Her wrinkled face and cropped silver hair belied a certain lawyerly showmanship. She hit all her key words hard and with perfect enunciation.
“Your Honor, we will discuss the many dangers encountered by Ms. Johnson’s son and also by Ms. Johnson herself, during a brief, tumultuous relationship with Mr. Cross, who has a long history of involvement with the most extreme homicide cases. And a long history of putting those around him in jeopardy.”
It went on and on from there, one loaded statement after another.
I glanced briefly in Christine’s direction, but she just stared straight ahead. Was this really what she wanted? How she wanted it to go? I couldn’t interpret her flat expression, no matter how I tried.
When Ms. Billingsley was through assassinating my character, she stopped her manic pacing and sat down.
Ben stood up immediately, but he stayed right next to me throughout his opening speech.
“Your Honor, I needn’t take up a lot of the court’s time at this point. You’ve seen the trial brief, and you know the key factors in this case. You already know that the first seeds of this arbitration were planted on the day that Ms. Johnson abandoned her newborn son.
“You also know that Doctor Cross provided Alex Junior with the kind of loving home any child would want during the first year and a half of his life. And you know that the longest bond, as they call it, the one we share with our siblings, exists for Little Alex at home in Washington, D.C., with the only family he knew up until last year.