I’d rather be anywhere but here. Then I step into the courthouse, and my day gets ten times worse.
Elizabeth
I CAN TELL he sees me, but he’s acting like he doesn’t. He’s got Priscilla Heat with him, and they’re en route from the courthouse entrance to the courtroom. At first I outright stare, but when his gaze jumps over me and then sticks to Priscilla’s face, I drop my eyes to my feet and keep on walking.
I feel sick to my stomach as I veer off my course, away from the women’s bathroom where I’d hoped to close myself into a stall and wrangle up some nerve, and back toward the front door of the courthouse, where Governor and Mrs. Carlson should be arriving any time now.
I realize for the first time how much hope my stupid little nothing with Hunter has been giving me, because seeing him with that—with that…woman—sucks it all away, making what I’m about to do feel much more difficult.
Nevertheless, I keep a straight face. I take a spot in the chair nearest to the courthouse’s lobby doors and wait with the reporters, who are double-checking microphones and reapplying lipstick as they wait for Cross’s shithead parents to arrive.
I look down at my aqua pantsuit and tell myself if nothing else, I can be glad about my physical fitness for the first time since high school. I’ve really taken to the elliptical, and it seems to have made my body happy. I can eat almost anything I want, as long as that doesn’t include a bunch of sugar, and I feel healthy and fit. And calmer.
I could let my Hunter sighting throw me off, but I’m determined not to—not yet, anyway. I need to get through this, to make good on a promise I made Cross when we were in ninth grade: that I would always have his back.
While I wait, I open the browser on my cell phone and revisit the web site I scoured earlier, feeling nervous butterflies just from looking at the discreet pictures. Even now, with the wheels of my plan already spinning, I’m not sure if I can really do this.
The crowd of reporters packed into the lobby stirs, jarring me out of my thoughts, and then the cameras start to roll. A second later, Governor and Mrs. Carlson stroll through the front doors, looking like they’ve had a thorough spit-shining.
I grit my teeth and follow them with my eyes. As soon as they’re through the arched entrance to the courtroom, my lawyer, Donald Hartley, comes to stand in front of me, arm out. I stand and give him a tight-lipped smile, but I don’t take his offered arm, choosing instead to walk into the courtroom a half-step behind him.
Donald is dressed in his signature pinstriped Armani suit, the one that makes my stomach churn because it reminds me of the many times we’ve appeared in court for my mother’s violations. He pats my shoulder in a fatherly fashion, and we take our seats in the third row. Immediately, I feel the stares burn into my back.
I wonder if I can feel Hunter’s even hotter than the others, but I can’t think of him right now. Seeing Cross’s parents take their seats on the other side of the aisle makes me feel nauseated. I don’t trust them. If they can cut off their own son, who knows what they might try to do to me. At the very least, I expect I’ll become even more of a social pariah than I already am.
As I wait through the proceedings dealing with other people and their problems, I run Nanette’s words through my head. What she told me, when I visited Sunday, about Cross and how ‘exceptionally’ well he’d been responding to the N-therapy before he was moved.
I rehearse my lines, putting some effort into not glancing over my shoulder to look for Hunter.
Finally, the Carlsons’ lawyer stands and explains the family’s position in a crisp monotone.
Diana Mendez, the judge, nods patiently, just the way she did for my parents’ divorce proceedings.
She looks curious when Donald rises. “Permission to speak?” he asks smoothly.
Diana’s lips bunch. “Permission granted.”
Donald holds a folder in one hand. He clasps his free hand over the one holding it. “My client, Elizabeth DeVille, is a lifelong friend of Cross Carlson, and is interested in his care.” I hold my breath while quiet sweeps the courtroom, and it is in that moment that I spot Hunter, seated on the fourth row across the aisle. I inhale deeply, trying not to focus on the outline of his form. “Miss DeVille would like to pay for Mr. Carlson to be returned to his previous facility. In fact” —my stomach squeezes— “she’d like to cover all his medical care for the remainder of this calendar year.”