Borrow My Seat novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Free

Courtroom Four had two hundred seats, and on the morning of January ninth all of them were taken.

I stood at the front table in a navy blazer, with my grandmother's ring on my right hand.

Behind me, the green-streaked coworker sat in the first row with the whole design team.

The finance partner sat at the end of that row with his coat folded on his knee.

He had come on purpose.

Greta sat in the aisle seat in her good scrubs, with a pack of tissues she had no intention of using.

Chantal sat three rows back beside her father.

She wore a black dress and no jewelry, and she didn't look up.

The woman in the lavender cardigan sat with five friends from the garden club, in their pearls.

In the last row, alone, sat Marjorie, in a coat that no longer fit her shoulders.

Tobias sat directly behind me on the gallery bench, close enough that I could feel him there.

My lawyer was the woman he knew who filed by Friday, and she had a stack of paper and a voice.

Across the aisle, Lane sat alone at the respondent's table.

His Brookfield lawyer had withdrawn in December, and he'd come without another.

He wore a gray suit that had been cut for a heavier man.

The bailiff said all rise, and we rose.

The judge came in, a tall woman with short white hair and a face that had heard everything twice.

"Be seated," she said.

"This is a petition to annul the marriage of Ingrid Eklund and Lane Raskin, on the ground of fraud."

"I see there are quite a few people."

"Your Honor," my lawyer said. "Ms. Eklund is prepared."

"Mr. Raskin?"

Lane stood.

"Your Honor, I'd like to contest."

"On what ground?"

"My wife knew," he said, and spread his hands.

"She signed with her own hand, in front of a clerk, with my mother as witness."

"She wants to throw it away because she found a richer man."

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