Chapter 8: What Carrie Said
Judge Harmon did ask to speak with Carrie.
Paula drove to pick her up while the court took a longer recess.
I waited in the hallway.
Victor Marsh sat at the far end of a bench near the window, his jacket folded over his knees, his attorney gone to make calls.
He looked smaller than he had that first evening on my front steps.
He looked up once and caught my eye.
"I didn't know about the video," he said.
"I know you didn't."
"She planned all of this."
"She was protecting her daughter," I said.
"That's what parents do."
He looked back at the window.
"I'm not a bad person," he said.
"I just — I wasn't ready.
When Carrie was born, I wasn't ready, and then it was too late, and I didn't know how to—" He stopped.
"I know that's not an excuse."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
He nodded once.
He didn't say anything else.
Paula arrived with Carrie twenty minutes later.
Carrie walked in wearing her school jacket, her backpack still on one shoulder, looking around the courthouse hallway with wide, careful eyes.
She saw me and came straight over.
"What's happening?" she asked quietly.
"There's a man who says he's your biological father," I said.
"He asked the court to review the adoption.
The judge wants to talk to you."
She went very still.
"Is he here?"
"Yes."
She looked down the hallway.
Victor had stood up.
He was looking at her across the distance with an expression I couldn't fully read — something between hope and shame.
Carrie looked at him for a long moment.
Then she looked back at me.
"Are you scared?" she asked.
"A little," I said honestly.
She reached out and took my hand.
"Don't be."
The clerk came to take her in.
She went without looking back at Victor.
The twenty minutes she was in that room were the longest of my life.
Paula sat beside me.
She didn't try to talk.
She just stayed there, which was exactly right.
When the door opened, Carrie came out first.
She walked directly to me and put her arms around my waist and held on.
"Okay," she said into my jacket.
"Okay."
Judge Harmon delivered her ruling twenty minutes later.
The petition to vacate the adoption was denied.
Victor Marsh was granted no visitation rights at this time, pending a separate evaluation to be scheduled at the court's discretion, contingent on demonstrated sustained effort and a formal petition supported by evidence of changed circumstances.
Caldwell was already on her phone before the judge finished speaking.
Victor stood very still.
Then he picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.
"Mr.
Marsh," Judge Harmon said.
He looked up.
"The door is not permanently closed.
But it opens from the inside." She held his gaze.
"That child will be eighteen in seven years.
What you do with those seven years is entirely up to you."
He left without looking at me.
In the hallway, Carrie was quiet for a long time.
We walked to the car.
Paula drove.
I sat in the back beside Carrie, and she leaned against my arm the way she used to when she was first learning to trust that I would still be there in the morning.
"Dad," she said.
"Yeah."
"What the judge said.
About the door opening from the inside." She thought about it.
"Does that mean he could come back someday?"
"It means that's his choice to make," I said.
"Not ours."
She was quiet again.
"Okay," she said finally.
"That's fair, I guess."
I looked out the window at the afternoon going by.
It was fair.
May you like
It was more than fair.
It was the most honest thing anyone had said in that building all day.
