Chapter 7: The Hearing
The formal hearing was six weeks later.
My daughter was born in the interim — thirty-eight weeks, seven pounds, four ounces, a full head of dark hair and a cry that filled the entire delivery room.
Becca was there.
Patrice sent flowers.
Detective Reyes sent a card that said simply: *Congratulations.
You did it.*
I named her Nora.
I did not consult Derek.
He had entered a cooperation agreement with the DA's office and was living in a rented room across town.
He had called once, from a number I didn't recognize, and left a voicemail that I listened to once and did not return.
He said he was sorry.
He said he hadn't understood how far it had gone.
He said he thought about Nora every day.
I believed parts of that.
Not all of it.
And I had decided that believing parts of it was enough to set down, and move forward, and not carry.
Lorraine's hearing was different.
She arrived in a charcoal blazer with her hair done and her attorney beside her, and she looked at me across the courtroom with an expression I recognized — that composed, faintly contemptuous patience she had used every time I had tried to argue with her in the room above the house.
Her attorney opened by calling the stream a "family wellness documentation project" conducted with my "implicit participation."
My attorney — a woman named Grace Chen who had been recommended by Detective Reyes and who had spent four weeks doing things I did not fully understand but deeply trusted — stood up and played forty-seven seconds of audio.
Lorraine's voice.
Clear.
Unmasked.
*"After this, nobody will believe a word you say."*
The courtroom was very quiet.
Grace then submitted the adoption facilitator's signed contract.
The fabricated psychiatric report.
The monetization records showing fourteen thousand, two hundred and sixty dollars in subscriber revenue.
The testimony of the physician who had signed the report and was now, separately, facing his own licensing review.
Lorraine's attorney said something quietly to her.
Lorraine said something back.
Then she turned to face the judge, and for the first time since I had known her, she had no expression at all.
The judge set a sentencing date.
On the way out of the courtroom, Lorraine passed close enough that I could have touched her.
She didn't look at me.
She looked straight ahead, her chin still up, her coat still straight.
At the door, she stopped.
She turned.
"I would have been a good grandmother," she said.
I looked at her for a moment.
"You would have had to be a decent person first," I said.
May you like
Grace touched my elbow gently.
We walked out into the cold air, and Becca was waiting on the steps with Nora in the carrier, and Nora was asleep, her face turned sideways against Becca's chest, and I stood there in the cold and just looked at her for a while.
