She wanted to say a thousand things right in that second. She wanted Bjorn to explain to her what he meant by ‘unsavory circumstances’. She wanted him to stop treating her like a criminal. She wanted to say something that would stop her sister from blowing her fuse like she seemed on the verge of doing. But instead, all she could do was open her lips and breathe.
Alison breathed too, and somehow, their hands found each other. Just for a second, a squeeze instead of a hold, and Samara convinced herself that her heart calmed from the touch.
It’s a lie, sure, but a comforting one.
Finally, miraculously, the judge glanced up from the paperwork. “Miss Drew?” she asked.
Their lawyer rose from her chair, unbuttoning her jacket as she moved. Only she could pull off the blood red skirt with the cropped jacket. Well, she and maybe Amy. Samara decided she should ask her friend if she owned that outfit.
“Your honor?” Drew asked after a couple seconds.
The judge removed her glasses. “Do you wish to present evidence or argument on the defendant’s motion to award sole custody?”
“I don’t have any evidence other than what the defendant presented,” Drew answered with a shrug. “I mean, nobody knows who this guy is or what his intentions are. We don’t even know where he plans to raise the child as a foreign national but yeah, he wants full custody. The court should take that into consideration.”
Judge Rees nodded again, all the way through the sound of the squeaky vinyl chair at counsel table and Drew’s pen scratching on paper. Then, there was nothing but steady breathing in the silence.
When the judge wet her lips, it was slow and careful, about as deliberate a gesture as Samara’s ever seen. She glanced at the affidavit again, then back across the courtroom. Samara wondered for a second what she was looking at, but she dispels the mystery when she asked, “Samara?”
Samara, for her part, jerked in her chair. She had spent the whole hearing, if you could call appearances and then the presentation of an affidavit a hearing, silent and still, her eyes focused on the pad of paper in front of her and her toes nudging at the floor. The last three or four days had really been a lesson in just how quiet she could be when she was scared out of her mind, because she had lurked around the house like a ghost, slump-shouldered and silent.
Two or three times, Alison had tried to coax some kind of response out of her, but Samara never budged, expertly avoiding the no-man’s-land of an unwanted conversation. At least, she’d managed until two days ago, when Alison had headed to her usual night shift and left her and Amy alone with a massive bowl of popcorn and the first season of Game of Thrones.
“I’m not even going to pretend it’s appropriate for a pregnant woman,” she’d complained on her way out the door, “but I’m also not going to pretend I could stop you.”
“Smart and sexy, just what I always wanted,” Samara had replied, and Alison had rolled her eyes before stalking out of the house.
They’d barely queued up the DVD before Samara had asked, “What happens if the judge decides to let Bjorn keep the baby?”
Amy, suave millionaire’s daughter that she was, nearly knocked the popcorn off the coffee table. “Say what?”
“The hearing on Friday. It’s to take the child away from me, right?” Amy had waited a couple beats before nodding, and Samara had promptly dropped her eyes down to the carpet. She’d looked vulnerable all of a sudden, not weak or small but shrinking, and Amy had worked not to reach over and just drag her into a hug. “What if the judge agrees? What if she gives him to him?”
“Then we keep doing what we’re doing,” Amy had said. She’d leaned back on the couch and folded her hands together, forcing herself not to turn into a total suck and suffocate the kid with cuddles. “You have a great lawyer whose gonna fight like hell for you and so am I and so is my family. And Alison. You’re not alone kid.” Samara had very nearly smiled. “The name on a piece of paper isn’t dispositive of whose kid this is.”
“Dispositive?”
“Conclusive.” When Samara had shot her another funny look, she’d rolled her eyes at her. “Lawyer word, look it up later, it’ll come in handy someday. But my point’s just that you’re going to be okay; we’re going to raise this kid together. And Bjorn fucking Fredriksen isn’t going to use whatever influence he thought he has to take it away from you.”
She was still thinking about that conversation when Jessica Drew elbowed her, and before she could really process it, she was on her feet at the counsel table. Her fingertips rested on the tabletop but the rest of her was at attention, alert and steady.