Chapter 7: The Table Turns
The custody hearing was scheduled for the following Wednesday.
In the four days between Mitchell's voicemail and that morning, three things happened that I had not expected.
The first was Raymond.
Mitchell's father called Carol's number — not mine — on Sunday evening.
Carol handed me the phone with an expression I couldn't read.
"He asked for you," she said.
I took the phone into the hallway.
"Valerie." Raymond's voice was different from the last time I had heard it.
Smaller.
"I want to say something."
"Go ahead."
A long pause.
"What I did — when I h*t you — that was wrong.
I've been sitting with it." Another pause.
"I'm not calling to ask you to drop anything.
I know you won't.
I'm just calling to say it was wrong and I knew it was wrong when I did it and I did it anyway." His voice broke slightly on the last word.
"I'm sorry."
I didn't say anything for a moment.
"Did Beatrice ask you to call me?" I said.
"No."
"Did Mitchell?"
"No.
They don't know I'm calling." He cleared his throat.
"I'm seventy-one years old.
I don't want to be the kind of man who did what I did and never said so."
"Raymond," I said carefully, "I need you to understand that this doesn't change what I'm doing."
"I know."
"And I may need to include what happened in the hearing."
"I know that too." A breath.
"Do what you need to do."
I handed the phone back to Carol.
She looked at me.
"He apologized," I said.
"Genuinely, I think."
Carol considered that.
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Nothing yet.
Tell Patricia."
The second thing was Brenda.
On Monday, Patricia called to tell me that Brenda had contacted her office directly — without a lawyer, without Mitchell's knowledge — and asked about the possibility of a reduced civil liability in exchange for a written statement.
"She wants a deal," Patricia said.
"What kind of statement?"
"Full account of the bracelet, the money, and — this is the part you need to hear — she says she has text messages between herself and Mitchell going back fourteen months.
Messages where he specifically directs her to make your life difficult.
To make you feel unwelcome.
To make you doubt yourself."
I sat down on the edge of Carol's couch.
"He planned it," I said.
"It appears so.
From very early on." Patricia's voice was careful.
"Brenda says she went along with it because Mitchell was supporting her financially and she was afraid of losing that.
She's not a sympathetic figure, Valerie.
But her evidence is real."
"Take the deal," I said.
The third thing happened Tuesday evening, the night before the hearing.
Mitchell came to Carol's building.
I didn't know he was there until Carol looked through the peephole and went very still.
"Don't open it," I said.
"I wasn't going to." She stepped back from the door.
"He's alone."
He knocked twice.
Then he said, through the door, in a voice I hadn't heard from him in years — quiet, almost gentle:
"Valerie.
I just want to see Daisy.
Five minutes.
I'm not here to fight."
Daisy was in the back room.
She hadn't heard him yet.
"Mitchell," I said through the door, "your lawyer and my lawyer will handle everything tomorrow.
Please leave."
A silence.
"She's my daughter," he said.
His voice had changed.
The gentleness was gone.
"You don't get to just take her."
"Go home, Mitchell."
Another silence.
Longer.
Then his footsteps moved away down the hall.
Carol and I stood in the quiet kitchen for a moment.
"Tomorrow," Carol said.
"Tomorrow," I said.
Daisy appeared in the doorway in her pajamas, bunny under her arm.
"Who was at the door?"
"Nobody important," Carol said easily.
"Want me to read you a story?"
Daisy considered this with great seriousness, then nodded and took Carol's hand.
May you like
I watched them disappear down the hallway.
Then I sat down at Carol's kitchen table and read through Patricia's case summary one more time, from the beginning, until I knew every word.
