Chapter Three: The Hour Outside
Judge Holloway called a recess.
She did it quietly, without drama, the way she did most things — a brief statement, a clear instruction, the sound of the gavel that was less a punctuation mark and more a mercy. She directed both women to the conference room at the end of the hall. She directed Tommy to the assessment room, where the family court counselor was waiting with, as it happened, a sandwich and a glass of water and the good sense not to begin any kind of formal session.
The hallway outside the courtroom emptied in the particular way of spaces after something large has happened — slowly, with people looking back over their shoulders, reluctant to leave before they’d understood what they’d just witnessed.
The conference room at the end of the hall was small, with a table that seated six and a window that looked onto the parking structure. There was a box of tissues on the table. There was always a box of tissues in this room.
Rachel and Diana sat on opposite sides of the table.
For the first four minutes, neither of them said anything.
Rachel was looking at the table surface. Her hands were in her lap, below the table’s edge, where Diana couldn’t see them, though Diana was not looking at her anyway. Diana was looking at the window, at the concrete face of the parking structure, at nothing in particular.
“He has your eyes,” Diana said finally.
Rachel looked up.
“I noticed it when I first saw photographs of you,” Diana said. “In the case file. When all this started. I thought —” She stopped. “I don’t know what I thought.”
“I used to look for him in crowds,” Rachel said. Her voice was used up, scraped clean by everything the morning had required of it. “For years. After I — after I made the decision I made, when he was two. I would see a boy the right age and I would think —” She shook her head. “It’s not an excuse. I know it’s not an excuse. I was eighteen and I couldn’t —” She stopped again. “It doesn’t matter why. He’s the one who grew up without me knowing it.”
“He’s good,” Diana said. And then, after a moment: “He’s a genuinely good person. That’s not — I’m not saying it to score a point. I’m saying it because I think you should know. He’s funny when he’s comfortable. He’s kind to people who are struggling. He noticed last year when our mail carrier seemed sad and he drew her a card and put it in the mailbox.” A pause. “He gets anxious about new situations and he needs extra time to prepare. He reads too late at night and argues about the flashlight ban. He has very strong opinions about what constitutes a good sandwich.”
Rachel made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob.
“He said he loves me,” she said softly. “He didn’t have to say that. He was under no obligation —”
“He meant it,” Diana said. “Tommy doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He never has.”
Another silence. The parking structure outside was the same parking structure it had always been, grey and unhelpful, which was somehow a comfort.
“I can’t give him up,” Diana said finally. “I need you to understand that. Not as a legal position. As a fact. He is my child and I cannot —”
“I know,” Rachel said. “I know that. I understood that —” She closed her eyes briefly. “I understood that when I heard him today. I just didn’t want to —”
“I know.”
The box of tissues sat between them on the table and neither of them took one, which felt, in its small way, like a beginning.
