The Nanny, the Husband, and the Woman They Forgot I Was novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: Final

"Do you want to go?" Cliff asked.

He was sitting up in the gray light with his hair flat on one side.

I put the phone face down on the blanket.

"To the plea?"

"To any of it."

I thought about the list on the glass table in Woodside.

The last line, in my handwriting.

To their faces. Not to a magazine.

"I want to see him keep his word," I said. "Once."

On Thursday morning the family courthouse in San Jose was still beige.

I didn't need to be there.

The judgment had been signed. The date was the date.

I went anyway.

I wanted to walk up the same steps where Blake had told me about the magazine.

The clerk at the window stamped a certified copy and slid it under the glass.

"Congratulations," she said, in the voice of someone who said it forty times a day.

"Thank you," I said, and meant it more than she could know.

I was folding it into my bag when somebody stopped beside me.

It was the judge with the half-moon glasses, carrying a coffee and a stack of files.

He looked at me, then at the paper.

"Mrs. Linwood."

"Your Honor."

"Still going to your group?"

"Every Tuesday."

He nodded once and kept walking.

The federal courthouse was ten minutes away.

It was taller and quieter and colder.

The courtroom on the fourth floor was already full at ten-forty.

The young engineer was in the second row in his pressed blue shirt.

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