Chapter 8 - The Grand Jury
The Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains was built in the nineteen-seventies—a concrete bunker designed to make human misery look like an administrative function.
On Thursday morning, the rain had turned into a steady, gray sleet that coated the granite steps in a slick skin of ice.
A crowd of twenty reporters and four local television camera crews had gathered near the metal detectors at the main entrance, their microphones clustered around the perimeter of the revolving doors.
At nine-forty-five, my father arrived.
He didn't have his town car. He came out of a yellow cab that smelled of cheap pine air freshener, accompanied by a lawyer named Harold Stern—a man who usually handled third-party slip-and-fall claims for strip malls in Yonkers. Stern had dandruff on the shoulders of his navy overcoat and was carrying three tattered red folders that were held together with rubber bands.
Richard Bennett looked like he had shrunk four inches.
His coat was too big for him; he had lost seven pounds in five days, his jowls hanging loose and gray beneath his jaw. He didn't look at the cameras. He held a copy of the New York Post over his face, his shoulder hunched against the freezing drizzle, stumbling twice on the granite steps before Stern caught his arm and hauled him through the scanner.
Inside the third-floor corridor outside Grand Jury Room B, the air smelled of wet wool and floor polish.
Chloe was sitting on a wooden bench near the water fountain, wearing an old trench coat that belonged to our mother. Her eyes were red, her makeup completely gone, her hair pulled back into a messy bun that looked like it hadn't been washed since Saturday night.
When she saw me walk off the elevator, she stood up so fast her purse fell to the floor, spilling lipstick tubes and half-used packs of tissues across the linoleum.
“Nora!” she cried, taking two steps toward me before Miller stepped between us, his bulk filling the six-foot width of the hallway like a stone pillar.
“Back up, ma'am,” Miller said, his hand resting casually against his belt.
“She’s my sister!” Chloe screamed, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “Nora, look at him! Look at Daddy! He has heart palpitations! He was awake all night throwing up in the bathroom! You’re going to kill him! Do you want to kill your own father over an accident?”
I stopped five feet from her.
I was wearing a charcoal wool coat that Adrian had given me for our second anniversary, simple black trousers, and flat leather boots. Beside me stood Harold Vance, Adrian’s uncle and the senior partner of the oldest corporate litigation firm in Manhattan. Harold had white hair, silver-rimmed spectacles, and an expression that suggested he had seen better-dressed defendants in the maritime courts of Liberia.
“It wasn't an accident, Chloe,” I said.
“He didn't mean to push her that hard!” she sobbed, clutching at the front of her coat with fingers that were missing two acrylic nails. “He just wanted you to leave! You ruined everything! Mark left for his brother’s house in Ohio this morning! He took the car! He took his clothes! He told me he was filing for an annulment on Friday!”
“Mark is going to be indicted by the Southern District before lunch, Chloe,” Harold Vance said, his voice dry, pleasant, and entirely merciless. “He won't be needing the car in Ohio. The federal transport has already been scheduled.”
The heavy oak doors of Grand Jury Room B opened with a dull, administrative creak.
A junior assistant district attorney with a thin briefcase and an unbuttoned trench coat stepped into the hall.
“Nora Vance?”
“Yes,” I said.
“The grand jury is ready for your testimony.”
I looked at my father.
He was sitting on the wooden bench ten feet away, his head in his hands, his knuckles pressed into his temples. He didn't look up. He couldn't. He knew that inside that room, twenty-three registered voters from Mount Vernon, Yonkers, and Peekskill were sitting behind three tiers of curved wooden desks, waiting to watch forty seconds of high-definition digital footage that showed his hands striking my shoulders from behind.
“Nora,” he whispered. The word was barely audible above the hum of the fluorescent lights. “Nora, please. I’m your father.”
I looked at him for two seconds.
I remembered the cold water hitting my face. I remembered the sound of Lily’s ribs vibrating against my collarbone. I remembered the applause.
May you like
“You were my father until eight-oh-three on Saturday night, Richard,” I said.
I turned my back on the bench, walked through the heavy oak doors, and let the latch click shut behind me.
