Chapter 15: The Hearing

"Strange men," Ruthann said, reading it over my shoulder. "The kid's going to want that on a T-shirt."

I didn't laugh.

I printed the photo and put it in the folder with my radio log from the welfare check.

Then I went to the cedar chest and took out the license.

Friday, March twentieth, was gray and wet.

Family court was on the fourth floor of the county building, in a room smaller than my mother's kitchen.

The judge was a heavy woman with half-glasses and a cardigan over her robe.

Reece sat at the other table in his navy suit.

His mother sat behind him in pearls.

Kaitlyn sat next to his mother in a white blazer, with her phone face down on her knee.

She waved at me with two fingers.

I didn't wave back.

Morgan had driven me there and was waiting out in the hall.

"I'm not going in," he'd said. "I'm exhibit B. I'll sit with the coats."

Reece's lawyer went first.

He talked for twenty minutes.

He said I'd "spiraled".

He held up the drive photos and the red circle.

He held up the police report and read the first line and not the last.

Then he held up the parking lot.

"Your Honor, eight weeks after a traumatic delivery, this mother was in a church parking lot at night with a man she met in January."

"While the infant was inside with a group of utility workers."

The judge looked at the photo over her glasses.

"Who was holding the baby?" she said.

The lawyer looked at his notes.

"A nurse, Your Honor. A Ms. Tolver."

"A nurse," the judge said. "Go on."

My lawyer stood up in her sneakers.

She talked for three.

"I'd like to call Ruthann Tolver."

She was chewing gum.

The judge looked at her.

Ruthann took the gum out and wrapped it in a tissue, slowly.

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