Life and Other Complications Read online

  I don’t know what surrounded her in the original painting. But I’m making her a meadow full of flowers. I debated what to do with her sky, but eventually decided on beams of sunlight breaking through a sea of dark clouds.

  Today, I was working on those strands of light when Caroline came into the mural room, pushing an enormous wheeled laundry cart.

  “Are you trying to smuggle Annie out of the orphanage?” I asked her.

  “Later,” Caroline said. “First I have to fold a billion white towels.”

  She dragged in a comfortable chair and sat down with her mountain of towels.

  Caroline spread a towel across her lap. “Are we talking or not talking?”

  “Are you capable of not talking?”

  “I am if that’s what you need.”

  I gave her a skeptical look.

  “Folding towels has a very calming effect,” Caroline said. “Soon people are going to give up yoga and raking sand and just fold towels to reach inner peace.”

  “You could lead workshops. Turn the Ballentine into the premier towel-folding retreat.”

  Caroline’s face lit up with possibilities. “People would come from all over the world to fold towels. We could cut staff and increase profits.”

  “That doesn’t sound very Zen.”

  “My mother’s genes broke through my inner peace,” Caroline said.

  “Maybe you should practice silent meditative towel-folding.”

  “I can do that.”

  And she did. Which led me to think there might actually be something to the Zen art of towel-folding.

  “Okay, I’m done being Zen,” Caroline said a few hours later.

  “You’ve reached inner peace?”

  “In an, ‘I don’t get paid after four o’clock’ kind of way,” Caroline said. “But I get another chance tomorrow.”

  “It’s a long journey,” I said.

  For both of us.

  Sunday, July 3

  The trial starts in two days. I barely slept last night. I lay awake for hours trying to put my memories into some kind of logical order, trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense.

  This morning I didn’t want to go anywhere or see anyone. But Mrs. Miller didn’t care how bad my night had been. She expected me to go to church and smile like everything is fine. I don’t know what she’s going to tell people when I leave tomorrow. Maybe she’ll say I’m somewhere with the Harrisons or the Reeses. Whatever it is, it won’t be the truth. Because Mrs. Miller doesn’t ever want to talk about things that are uncomfortable. She thinks we would all be better off if we ignored unpleasant topics.

  Apparently, Luke’s dad doesn’t agree. Because this morning in church, Reverend Harrison ignored the readings listed in the bulletin and didn’t go near the pulpit. Instead, he walked down the steps that lead from the altar to the nave and stood in front of the first pew.

  “This morning, I would like to tell you a story found in the Old Testament Book of Esther. It’s the story of a selfish and powerful king who decided he wanted a new queen.

  “So, the king sent his soldiers out to collect young girls who had never slept with a man. The girls weren’t given a choice. They were simply taken, from their homes, their families, the lives they knew, and imprisoned in the king’s palace. One of those girls was named Esther.

  “The night came when it was Esther’s turn to be sacrificed to the king’s appetites. He stole more than her innocence that night. He took her power and her voice. And the next day he married her, sentencing her to spend the rest of her life trapped inside his palace.

  “One day after she was married, Esther’s cousin Mordecai sent her a message, telling her there was a plot to kill all of the Jews. Mordecai asked Esther to go before the king and plead for the lives of her people. He told her, ‘Perhaps you have been placed in your position for such a time as this.’

  “Now, Esther was afraid. Not because she was weak. But because she knew the law. To go before the king without his summons was punishable by death. To do what Mordecai asked, she would be defying the king’s rules and risking the wrath of the man who could destroy her. To make matters worse, Esther had a secret. No one in the palace knew that she was a Jew.

  “Fear told Esther to protect her secret and her life, to avoid the king’s wrath at all costs. But there were innocent lives at stake. And no one else could take her place. So despite her fears, Esther agreed to go before the king. As she prepared to do what seemed unthinkable, Esther made one request. She asked her community to pray for her for three days.

  “On the third day, Esther walked the long corridor that led to the throne room. She was terrified. But she found courage in the fact that she wasn’t alone. Her entire community was standing with her.

  “And as her feet carried her closer and closer to the king’s throne room, she realized something else. Something vitally important. She was strong enough to tell the truth.”

  Reverend Harrison looked right at me. “Esther’s innocence may have been stolen from her at a young age. She may have been isolated in her heartache and burdened with her secrets. But out of her experiences grew an opportunity, not to change the past, but to redeem it. To bring beauty out of ashes. To see justice served.

  “And so, with her head held high, Esther walked through the enormous doors and faced the king.”

  “Did she win?” asked a boy from the middle of the church.

  His mother hushed him, but Reverend Harrison smiled.

  “Yes, Charlie,” he said. “It wasn’t quick or easy. But in the end, she won.”

  Tuesday, July 5

  The trial started today. I threw up twice before we ever left the hotel room. When I opened the bathroom door, Caroline unzipped her makeup bag. With a little foundation and blush, she made me look almost human again.

  The Harrisons were waiting for us in the hall. Luke was wearing his funeral suit. I tried not to think too much about that.

  No one ate much of the complimentary breakfast served in the lobby. Long before I was ready, it was time to drive to the courthouse.

  Mr. Raleigh was waiting for us in the hallway outside courtroom three. “Good morning,” he said.

  I introduced my entourage, who all shook his hand.

  “Is the girl here?” I asked him.

  “No,” Mr. Raleigh said.

  Part of me was glad she wasn’t there. That she didn’t have to listen to what was going to be said in that room. But at the same time, I wanted to see her.

  “Are we starting with jury selection?” Reverend Harrison asked.

  “No,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Mr. Wallace waived his right to a trial by jury. The verdict will be decided by Judge Baxter.”

  I was a little relieved that there will be fewer people in that room watching me. But I still had to ask, “Why would he do that?”

  “Juries tend to be more driven by emotion, especially in cases involving children,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Judges are more likely to decide the case based on its merits.”

  “So a jury would have helped us,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Probably,” Mr. Raleigh said. “But Judge Baxter is fair. He will weigh all of the evidence.”

  Except I didn’t have physical evidence. It was all thrown out.

  “We’ll have the opening statements first,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Then we’ll begin with the first witness. Alyson, you’ll be fourth.”

  I didn’t know if I should be happy about that or not.

  Luke and I aren’t allowed in the courtroom until it’s our turn to testify. But Mrs. Reese went in to serve as our court correspondent.

  When Mr. Raleigh opened the door and held it for Mrs. Reese, I got a good look at the courtroom. It looks almost the way I had pictured it, except there were no windows. Otherwise, it looked like the ones from TV, rows of seats for spectators, then the bar. The judge’s raised bench and the jury box were empty. But the defense table wasn’t. I saw Miss Stone and her lackey and beside the
m, Richard Wallace.

  Even from behind I knew him, the shape of his shoulders, the cut of his suit.

  “That’s him?” Luke and Caroline said at almost exactly the same time.

  I nodded.

  I could feel the rage they were directing at the back of Rick’s head. But I didn’t feel angry. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t. I felt cold.

  The court room doors swung shut, blocking Rick from sight. But I still knew he was there on the other side of the wall. And I kept hearing his voice whispering to me.

  Luke and Caroline and Luke’s parents spent the entire morning trying to distract me. We walked all of the halls of the courthouse, taking note of which vending machines offered which items and which floor had the cleanest restrooms.

  At lunch, Mrs. Reese gave us the recap of the morning. “Opening statements took about half an hour. The prosecutor said he did it; the defense team said he didn’t. Then Raleigh called his first witness, a woman whose mother had dated Wallace when she was a little girl. He touched her. She told her mother. They moved out. Raleigh questioned her for forty-five minutes.”

  Mrs. Reese started to eat as if she was finished with her account.

  The trial started at nine. They broke for lunch at twelve. That left an hour and forty-five minutes unaccounted for.

  “So what did they do for the rest of the time?” I asked her.

  And for the first time in my life, I saw Caroline’s mother look uncomfortable. “Cross-examination.”

  And it had been bad. I could see that much on Mrs. Reese’s face.

  “Ms. Stone tore her testimony apart,” I said quietly.

  “We don’t know that,” Reverend Harrison said.

  But I was looking at Mrs. Reese’s face and I knew I was right, even before she nodded.

  After lunch, Mrs. Reese went back into the courtroom to watch Ms. Stone continue to brutalize the prosecution’s first witness. The rest of us stayed in the hall, the four of them giving me reassuring looks and then exchanging concerned glances.

  Around three o’clock, the doors of the courtroom opened, and half a dozen people came out, including Mrs. Reese.

  “We’re taking a fifteen-minute recess before Mr. Raleigh calls his second witness,” Mrs. Reese told us.

  I did the math. Ms. Stone had spent almost four hours cross-examining a witness who said Rick had only gotten as far as touching her. At that rate, she was going to spend days on me.

  Friday, July 8

  Today was trial day four.

  The morning was agonizing. Ms. Stone was cross-examining the prosecution’s third witness. When she finished, it would be my turn to take the stand. I almost wished that time would speed up so I could get this over with. Almost.

  Minutes before twelve, the courtroom doors opened, and a stream of people came out. I was looking for Mrs. Reese, but I saw another woman. I had seen her a few times, coming in and out of the courtroom. But today, she looked at something on my side of the hall, and I saw her face. Her hair was shorter, her clothes more sophisticated. But her face was still the same, only now in more expensive makeup.

  My mother had just walked out of the courtroom.

  She disappeared with the crowd headed downstairs to find lunch.

  “What do you want?” Caroline said.

  I didn’t look at her. “What?”

  “For lunch.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I could feel Luke and Caroline exchanging glances, but I hardly noticed. I was still staring at the stairwell where my mother had disappeared.

  My mother.

  I haven’t seen her in almost a decade.

  And now she was here.

  Here to see me?

  Or here to watch Rick sentenced to prison?

  Or here for him?

  I tried to push that idea out of my mind and focus on the other options. But if she was here to see me, wouldn’t she have asked Mr. Raleigh where I was?

  Maybe she was too shy. Or maybe she didn’t even know I was going to be here. Maybe she was sorry for what she did last time. Maybe she’s felt badly about it for all these years, and she came to see Rick finally get convicted.

  I didn’t know. Honestly, I didn’t know her anymore. Maybe I never did.

  Because when the police came to question her, she lied. She said that I never told her about the abuse, and that she had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong. It was one of the reasons the district attorney hadn’t pursued my case. There was no corroborating evidence.

  I was distracted all through lunch, but no one seemed surprised.

  When we got back to the courthouse, I looked into the empty courtroom and then turned to stare at the top of the stairs, waiting. It was about ten minutes later when my mother came into view. She walked into the ladies’ room.

  My heart was beating so hard I was shaking. But my voice was almost steady when I said, “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Caroline said.

  “No. I’m fine.” I didn’t know what I was going to do, just that I needed to do it myself.

  When I opened the door, there were two women talking while they touched up their makeup. I went to a free sink at the end of the line and washed my hands. A toilet flushed, my mother walked across the bathroom and turned on the water at one of the sinks further down the line. The talkers left. It was just the two of us now.

  For a decade I’ve wanted to see her, and now there she was, mere feet from me, and I didn’t have any idea what to say.

  My mother finished washing her hands and started walking toward the door. I was watching her in the mirror, and I saw the moment when she noticed me. She stared at me for seconds, before finally taking a step closer, her face stunned.

  “Alyson?”

  I turned to face her.

  She was there, right in front of me. But I couldn’t form words.

  There were tears in her eyes. “I have been so worried about you. Those people who took you from us wouldn’t tell me where you were. Even after they dropped the charges against Rick, they wouldn’t let you come home.”

  My mother reached toward me, but stopped, her hand hovering in the air. I looked at that hand, at the perfectly manicured nails and the rings on her finger, a massive diamond and a wedding band.

  She married Rick.

  Even after she knew.

  She married him.

  She came closer. We were so close we could have held hands the way we used to when I was small.

  Mama looked at me with compassionate eyes. “Rick doesn’t blame you for what you said. Neither of us do. We know the police pressured you into saying it was him.”

  And finally, I found my voice. “It was Rick.”

  Mama shook her head. “No, Baby. One of the men from the poker game hurt you. Rick was so upset. He couldn’t get over the fact that one of his friends would do that to you.”

  “They didn’t. Rick did.”

  “You don’t remember,” Mama said.

  “I remember. I remember telling you he was hurting me.”

  “No.” She spoke as if that one word could negate everything that had happened.

  “I told you in the kitchen.” My voice was rising. “And you called me a liar. You dragged me into the bathroom and washed my mouth out with soap while the eggs burned.”

  All of the gentle concern slid out of my mother’s face. “That never happened,” she snapped.

  “I could barely walk when he was done with me, and you said nothing.”

  “Enough,” my mother hissed at me. “You have to stop lying.”

  “I did,” I said.

  But she wasn’t listening. “Do you realize how much trouble you caused us? Rick almost lost his job over the last investigation. And now this. Catalina never would have gotten the idea if you hadn’t lied. Now she has her daughter spouting off all the same lies. Just so they can sue us later.”

  I knew Catalina. She was Rick’s housekeeper when I lived ther
e. She didn’t have any children then. That makes the girl young. Less than ten.

  I felt sick again.

  And angry. So incredibly angry.

  “What did the little girl say?” I asked my mother. “Did she say that Rick had her sit in his lap so he could touch her? Did he talk her into giving him ‘presents’?”

  The color was draining out of my mother’s face. She took a step back. But I wasn’t letting go.

  “I never told Catalina any of that. The only way she would have known was if her daughter told her. Because Rick did the same things to her.”

  My mother was shaking her head. “You’re lying.”

  “Why?” I was moving toward her now. “Why would I lie about this? Admitting that Rick was abusing me meant I lost everything. Why would I do that if it wasn’t true?”

  “It-it was the police,” Mama said. “They pressured you.”

  “No. That’s Rick’s lie.”

  “Rick is a good man,” my mother said. But her voice was losing its conviction.

  Mine was just angry. “Rick is a monster that you’ve been protecting when you should have been protecting that little girl. When you should have been protecting me.”

  There were tears on my cheeks and sobs catching in my throat. “Because we were worth protecting. We still are.”

  My mother faltered. I turned and walked out of the room.

  It was time for me to testify.

  Dear Olivia,

  For the past two months I have been terrified of this day, of walking into that court room and facing that man. But I saw my mother today. And after I left her, I could barely feel my fear. It had been drowned out by pain and rage.

  When I reached the hallway, I saw Mr. Raleigh waiting for me. Luke’s parents both looked concerned. But it was Luke and Caroline who came to meet me in the middle of the hall. For a second, it was just the three of us.

  They didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to. We would handle this the way we handle everything else. What ever happened, we were in this together.

  When I started toward the doors, Luke and Caroline fell into step on either side of me. And mingled in with the pain and rage, I felt a sudden surge of love. Because I wasn’t alone. My mother might have failed me, but I am still loved. Loved with a fierceness that makes me brave and a power that reminds me that I’m strong, strong enough to tell the truth. I already had. I had already told this story in all of its horrible pieces. And I had survived it. I had become better for it.