The Night I Stopped Waiting for My Husband novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Eleven Pages
The courtroom was silent for as long as it took the judge to set down his pen.
Constance did not stop.
I think she could not.
"I read the drawings at Conrad's funeral," she told the gallery. "I read the date on every sheet."
"I knew my son had never drawn a line, and I knew that a girl at the end of a table had drawn all of it."
"Constance," Rosalind said, very low. "Stop."
"I knew it, and I did what a mother does. I protected what was left."
My lawyer did not move a muscle.
"Protected how, Mrs. Merrick?"
"I asked the firm's counsel to draw up your paper," Constance said to me, as if I were the only person in the room. "I put eight pages in front of you, and I held the pen."
"When you entered the Boston design prize four years ago, I made one telephone call."
"You blocked her entry," said my lawyer.
"I made a call! I would do it again. Do you understand what that building is to this family? It is the only thing my son left that anyone will remember."
"It's the only thing he left that anyone will remember because of me," I said.
The judge looked at me, and I realized I had said it out loud.
He did not rebuke me.
"Counsel for the petitioner," he said instead, in his patient voice. "Do you wish to continue?"
The lawyer in the buttoned jacket was already on his feet, gathering his papers.
"Your Honor, I withdraw from this matter," he said, and he walked out of the courtroom without looking at his client.
"The petition is denied," said the judge. "The mother retains custody. The father's visits will follow the schedule his wife sets, as he has agreed."
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