Prologue
They never gave me a polygraph. I imagined myself strapped to a machine with a series of questions being rattled off. The proctors would nod their heads and mark the sheets as it fed out the results. Everyone wanted to know the truth, yet they asked the wrong questions over and over. Are you okay? Do you need a break? What can I do? No one would want to hear the real answers.
My hand closed around the organic chemistry note cards in my pocket. How does Hydrogen and Chlorine react in the presence of an Alkaline?
The corner of my mouth twisted upward. Inappropriate to laugh, stop it. I forced a serious face before anyone noticed. There I was, sitting in the District Attorney’s office with stupid organic chemistry note cards in my pocket.
My mom sat on the adjacent wall from me, staring off into space somewhere. I also had the ability to fix my eyes on a given object while my brain sputtered into shut down mode. It was a welcomed retreat at times.
Deep crevices muddled the brilliance of my mom’s eyes and I wondered what she was thinking. Her weight shifted from one side of the chair then back again. It was a common dance she did to relieve the pressure in her lower back. The only interruption to her gaze happened when a man or woman in a suit entered the room.
I wondered if she even knew what organic chemistry was. “You would need this oxidizer. These two elements react like this, see?” I would draw a little diagram. “Simple.”
“Oh, I don’t know Brooke, you’ll never need that anyway.” The look on her face, the way her lips spread into a smaller, thin line told me she didn’t want to hear about the things she refused to understand.
I was nineteen-years-old, a sophomore in college. The room could barely hold ten people, and it was cement gray, just like I imagined when I thought of a courthouse waiting room. A secretary sat in the corner checking her email, only stopping to pick up the phone or take a long, hard swallow of her mega sized WaWa coffee. She was the only one in the room that looked at ease while everyone else sat in an awkward silence waiting for Heather to come in and tell us what was next.
I hate this room. My butt is asleep. Yes, Miss Secretary, can I help you? I’ll just stare back.
Mismatched posters held to the wall with ripened shards of tape. My uncle’s chair had one leg slightly shorter than the rest and his mindless rocking helped pass the time.
My aunt picked up a pamphlet sitting next to her and opened it. It returned to the table just as fast. STD’s and their warning signs was not her choice of reading material this morning.
Heather shuffled through the door with wide eyes, banging her briefcase against her knees. “Okay, good, everyone’s here then.”
She was my designated victims advocate. Her job was to guide me through the court hearings so I could understand, so she usually had to explain things more than once. The flood of information I was expected to absorb about the judicial system failed to hold any meaning to me.
Heather didn’t try to sugarcoat anything. She was blunt. “This is what the judge means,” followed by, “Any questions?”
Hundreds. Thousands even. I solved chemical reactions with ease, but tripped over the things Heather tried to drill into my head. She was worn too.
“I don’t know how you’re doing this,” Heather said just a week ago, her emerald eyes drooping. “I give you a lot of credit kiddo. They really tore you down in there, and you kept your own. I know I keep saying this, but it’ll be over soon.”
I would get an Irish victims advocate. Her hair bounced around her face blazing in its red glory and highlighted the doubt in her eyes as she tried to soothe me. I took it with a grain of salt, smiled, and accepted the one of many hugs that generally came my way after a debriefing.
She would make some kind of remark about how us both being Irish was the only reason we would ever consider fighting this long and hard, but that we made a great team, didn’t we?
“You better come see me when all this is over,” she said, more than once. “You know, if you can ever handle coming back here,” she motioned, flicking her hand to the space surrounding us. She was right. I hated this room, this entire place. The smell of burnt coffee, the weird sounds the elevator made as we hurried down to courtroom three. I wanted to forget it all.
I lost track of how many of the courtrooms I had seen the inside of sometime after the first year of going there. Heather kept me grounded.
The security guards knew me well and were always happy to see me. The woman guard would greet me with a smile. “Ah, back again today?”
I would force a half smile while scanning the lobby area. She would read my face. “He’s not here yet, honey.”
I relaxed and focused on getting into the District Attorney’s office. The faster the better.
We parked behind the building and came through the less utilized handicapped entrance. Mom had rods and screws molded to her spine from her work injury years ago. She was a walking tin man, awkward gait included, guaranteed to set off the annoying alarm on the metal detectors. They waved a wand over her instead. She would nod and apologize for the inconvenience to the guards, but the smirk on her face absorbed all the pitied glances thrown her way.
Stroudsburg was a pretty small town in nowhere Pennsylvania, so coming through the back also threw off any news reporters trying to overhear conversations between everyone that walked into the building behind me.
“Well then,” the guard would say, lowering her voice. “Let’s hope I don’t have to see you anymore after today.” She would wink as I crossed the lobby to Heather’s office.
“Doesn’t my lawyer look like David Caruso, you know, the guy on CSI Miami? He’s got reddish hair,” I said to Heather, moving my hand over my own unruly mob of wavy hair. She checked him out and raised an approving eyebrow.
Even though he was my lawyer I exchanged words with him maybe three times throughout the whole time I knew him. Generally anything that I needed to know Heather told me. She would relay any information back to him that I needed to tell him. His eyes would say I’m sorry you’re here again whenever I would enter his office.
I sometimes imagined him making those slam dunk speeches I saw on CSI. Secretly I wanted to witness the kind of closing statement that would leave an audience gasping I knew it! Case Solved! He remained quiet and collected, though, boring even. I grimaced. I never wanted my life to end up like a TV show anyway. This was real life, my life.
A lot of family showed up on the last day of court. I understood the drive from Long Island, New York to Pennsylvania was a long one, so I didn’t expect the support every time we had a hearing. That last day was important.
There was comfort in the waiting room, a sense of familiarity. Family stared at me and waited for me to cry, to think, to breathe.
Secretaries and lawyers rushing in late to meet their first clients of the day analyzed all the people around me as they passed through. They acknowledged all the adults, the only child in the room. I ignored them and studied my note cards. They tightened their lips, some shook their heads.
Must be a custody hearing, poor kid.
Chapter One
Wow, he can hold his breath for a long time.
My brother’s head bobbed halfway under the water of the kiddie pool. I traced the outline of Barbie’s face on my bathing suit and waited for him to come up. Adam could hold his breath longer this time since he was seven, a whole year older than me, so his mouth must be bigger to hold more air.