The Encore of Us novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Cross

On the twelfth of December every bench in the fourth-floor courtroom was full again.

The gray-haired judge looked over her half-glasses at the crowd and sighed.

"If anyone is here to see a spectacle," she said, "I hope you are prepared to be bored."

Ingrid sat at the petitioner's table in a black suit with her pearls.

Her lawyer in the charcoal suit sat beside her with his leather folder.

Rhea sat behind me with her lanyard in her fist.

Tove was at the lake house with a babysitter and a bowl of batter.

On my other side sat Anders, in a gray suit, with his hand over mine under the table.

His side still pulled when he sat, and he pretended it didn't.

Ingrid's lawyer called him first, to make a point.

"Mr. Brandvold, you've known your daughter for eight weeks."

"I've known her for fifty-nine days."

"You are living with the respondent."

"I'm in love with the respondent."

A sound went through the benches.

"I gave my daughter a kidney, counselor. I did it for her. I was not buying her mother, and she would not let me."

"You are unemployed."

"I am between jobs. I resigned because of what my mother did with eighty-four letters."

"Would you describe your mother as unfit?"

Anders looked at Ingrid.

He took a long time to answer.

"I would describe her as a woman who is going to be asked a great many questions," he said.

"I'd like Tove to have a grandmother who can answer them."

The judge raised her eyebrows.

Ingrid's lawyer sat down.

My legal-aid lawyer stood and fidgeted with her cuff.

"No questions," she said. "But my client has a request, Your Honor. She asks to put one question to Mrs. Brandvold herself."

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