Ripley paid no more attention to her than if she’d been a fly buzzing at the windowpane. ‘Six years? Well, now, Mrs Van Doren, that’s certainly commendable. I take it you attend AA meetings?’ He crossed his legs and leaned back, one knee cradled in his fat pink hands.
A scalding rush of blood left Noelle’s cheeks stinging. ‘I—well, no, not for some time,’ she was forced to admit. ‘I stopped going after my third year. I just
…
didn’t feel the need anymore.’
‘And you haven’t had a drink in all that time? Six years, didn’t you say?’
‘That’s right, Your Honor.’
‘Well, now, that does present somewhat of a dilemma.’ The snowy peaks of his brows drew together in an expression of deep consternation. ‘I was going to suggest you volunteer for treatment and that we reconvene at some future date to decide what’s best for your little girl. But I can see that’s not where we’re headed.’
Noelle felt a flicker of hope. ‘I’ve been
trying
to explain, Your Honor. This whole thing is’—she caught Lacey’s warning look and barreled on regardless—‘a terrible mistake. I would never do anything to harm my daughter. In fact, it’s the other way a—’
‘Your Honor,’ interrupted Robert’s attorney, ‘my client isn’t out to malign his wife. He’s genuinely concerned for her welfare. But we’ve got to keep in mind that the state of Mrs Van Doren’s health isn’t our primary concern. We have to think of what’s best for the child.’
Ripley’s frown deepened. ‘Thank you, Mr Beale, but I don’t believe I need to be reminded of my duty,’ he replied testily, his expression softening as he turned back to Noelle. ‘No one is suggesting you would ever
purposely
harm or neglect your child, Mrs Van Doren. But might there have been times you weren’t entirely, shall we say,
cognizant
of your daughter’s needs?’
‘You mean, like a blackout?’ Noelle’s heart was beating in great, lurching thuds. Things had gotten off to a bad start, but she felt powerless to reverse them.
‘Precisely.’ Ripley brought the tips of his fingers together under his chin as though fairly clapping with glee, as if she were a dull pupil who for once had gotten the correct answer.
Noelle felt sick. ‘But I
told
you. I’ve been sober for six—’
‘Noelle, for God’s sake!’ Robert erupted. ‘Everyone in that restaurant
saw
you. I practically had to carry you out to the car! If that were all, believe me, we wouldn’t be sitting here. But when I think of all those other times, what might have happened if our little girl had wandered into the street, or—’ He stopped, as if too choked up to continue.
Noelle was engulfed in a hot flood of panic. In her drinking days she’d never had what you would call a true blackout. More like brownouts, where she’d been only vaguely aware of what was going on, like the outlines of solid objects sketched amid a thick fog. Nevertheless, her first waking thought the morning after was always:
Oh, God, what did I do?
She had the same feeling now, a hollowness in the pit of her stomach coupled with prickly unease. The ticking of the clock seemed suddenly ponderous, tolling her doom.
‘I wasn’t drunk that night, or any other night,’ she insisted, her words dropping like heavy footfalls into the stillness. ‘Your Honor, I—I don’t know what happened.’ On the verge of blurting,
I’m almost positive I was drugged,
she thought better of it and said, ‘All I know is I fainted, and when I woke up the next morning, my daughter was gone.
He
took her. Not because he cares about her welfare but because I’d told him I wanted a divorce. Can’t you see what he’s doing? He set me up. But
none
of it’s true. Not one word.’
‘So you didn’t show up at your husband’s house—pardon me, the, ah, marital residence—the afternoon of Tuesday the seventeenth and attempt to force entry?’ Ripley stared pointedly at her injured foot, still wrapped in its somewhat grubby Ace bandage.
Noelle’s face burned. A rivulet of sweat worked its way out from under her bra strap to trickle down her spine. ‘I never said that.’
‘This is outrageous.’ Lacey twitched in her seat. ‘My client isn’t on trial here!’
‘No, and that’s exactly what I was attempting to avoid.’ The judge spoke sharply, and for the first time Noelle became aware of a nasty edge to his voice. Like a merry elf who wasn’t an elf at all, but a mean little gnome. ‘However, it appears we’re getting nowhere with all this. For the time being, I’m going to rule that the minor in question remain with her father until
both
parents have been evaluated by a court-appointed psychologist.’
‘No!
’ Noelle reared up on legs that suddenly felt elastic, as if they might stretch on and on forever. ‘You can’t do this! Please, you don’t understand. She’s only five!’ Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. ‘I’m the only one who knows she likes her juice in a
cup,
not a glass, and that she won’t go to sleep if the blinds aren’t all the way drawn. She loves graham crackers but won’t eat the cinnamon-flavored kind. She—’ Noelle stopped, suddenly aware that everyone in the room was staring at her, aghast. Even Lacey.
Then the judge’s eyes cut away, and his fey tone dissolved into one of crisp authority. ‘I’ll allow supervised visits three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from one to four. Under the guidance of Child Protective Services down the hall. See my secretary on the way out for instructions.’
The hearing, if that was what this was, had ended. Noelle sank back in stunned disbelief. The strength had gone out of her legs, and she was only dimly aware of Lacey patting her arm. Like a rabbit’s to a snake, her gaze was inexorably drawn to Robert, who was already making his way toward the door. He glanced back at her with an expression just shy of a smirk.
White-hot rage billowed up inside her, eclipsing everything else.
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
The room blurred and faded, like a badly scratched print of an old movie, just then she remembered something else about
Treasure Island:
that Ben Gunn wasn’t just a harmless eccentric. In his solitude, deprived of all he’d once held dear, his mind had become unhinged.
That was exactly what she felt happening to her. As Noelle sat trembling in her chair, sick with fury and despair, the thought that jumped into her mind was like a rat scuttling after Ben Gunn’s cheese:
What I really need right now is a drink.
At twelve forty-five on Friday, Noelle pulled up in front of the courthouse for the first of her scheduled visits with Emma. She’d spent a bad night, pacing the floor and berating herself endlessly. But what could she have said or done that would have made things turn out differently? Any fool could see the judge was on Robert’s side. Had she sat back and let Lacey do all the talking, the outcome would have been the same. In the end, too, Robert would win, just as he always did. She grew so despondent that at one point, in the early hours of the morning, she went as far as to pour herself a shot of brandy from the cut glass decanter in Nana’s china closet. Just to help her get to sleep, she told herself. They all thought she’d fallen off the wagon anyway; she might as well enjoy the benefit of it. For several long minutes she’d stared as if hypnotized at the glass trembling in her hand, its familiar vapors rising up to soothe her like a murmured promise. Then, with a low cry, she’d dashed into the kitchen to hurl its contents down the drain.
Morning had brought a renewed sense of hope. The memory of her close call the night before had left her with an uneasiness that was hard to shake, but she took comfort in the fact that she
hadn’t
slipped. Not because she was so virtuous but because in a life where booze had once reigned supreme there was now something even more important: her child. She had to stay strong and sober—as much for Emma as for herself.
Now, as she once more climbed the courthouse steps, a new fear rose to tighten its fingers about her throat. Robert would have told their daughter that she was sick or crazy … or both. Admittedly, her own actions the other day had done nothing to prove him wrong. Suppose he’d brainwashed Emma to such a degree that she
wanted
to stay with him. The possibility left Noelle momentarily paralyzed, one hand clutching the ornate wrought-iron rail, the slight tenderness in her right foot, from which she had removed the bandage, entirely forgotten.
But to give in to that kind of thinking was exactly what Robert wanted. Once, during an argument, he’d claimed to know her better than she knew herself, and for an awful instant she’d wondered if it was true. But she knew now that it wasn’t. For one thing she was stronger than he imagined. No match in terms of clout, true, but if there was one thing she had learned how to do, it was to endure. She had weathered a childhood of waiting for her mother, lying in bed each night, listening for the turn of her key in the lock. She’d navigated the turbulent seas to sobriety. For years she’d put up with Robert’s cold silences and criticism and the lifestyle to which she was no more suited than a school horse to the racetrack. The storybook character she’d most identified with as a child was the resourceful pig in ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ Now she would have to do the same: build a house the Big Bad Wolf couldn’t blow down.
Robert would have been surprised to learn that she had already begun laying the bricks. Her father was investigating some shady business dealings Robert might or might not have been involved in. Though she doubted Dad would be able to find much—Robert was in a class by himself when it came to covering his ass—she’d spent enough time around newspaper reporters to learn to expect the unexpected.
In AA there was a saying:
More will be revealed.
And maybe something would be revealed about Robert.
Inside, as she climbed the stairs to the second floor, Noelle was flooded by a new determination. She remembered when Emma was born, twenty-eight hours of labor that had ended in a cesarean. But the moment her tiny daughter was placed in her arms any lingering discomfort she might have felt vanished as if by the wave of a magic wand. She would never forget the utter trust with which Emma had gazed up at her, as if comprehending that this was her mother, who loved her and would protect her always.
Noelle blinked back tears as she turned down a corridor that ended in a glass-partitioned door on which was stenciled
SCHOHARIE COUNTY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES. Her
heart was beating high in her throat. In her right hand she clutched a shopping bag that held a new Barbie, a roll of stickers, and a dozen of the miniature iridescent butterfly clips Emma was currently enamored with. She was early; it was only a few minutes to one. Would Robert be on time? Or show up late just to spite her?
She walked in to find her daughter kneeling on a chair at one of the desks, absorbed in the crayons and coloring book some thoughtful employee had provided. Noelle felt her heart take flight.
Emma looked up. Her face flooded with joy as if a light had come on. ‘Mommy!’
She wore a ruffled yellow sundress with a heart-shaped bib, and her dark hair was plaited in two neat braids tied with lengths of fat pink yarn, a familiar touch, courtesy of Grandma Van Doren. In her rush to scramble off the chair, the buckle on one of her sandals caught on the lacy hem of her dress, and Emma nearly went tumbling headlong to the floor. Noelle lunged forward, catching her just in time.
She hugged her daughter tightly. ‘Oh, sweetie. Do you know how much Mommy missed you?’
Emma wriggled from her grasp and spread her arms wide.
‘This
much,’ she crowed.
An older heavyset woman with poodle-permed hair wearing a kelly green pantsuit rose from behind a desk to introduce herself as Mrs Scheffert. Noelle had to resist the urge to wring the woman’s hand in gratitude when, instead of merely standing guard, she ushered them into an empty office, leaving the door discreetly ajar. Her gratitude would seem disproportionate, and she didn’t dare risk Mrs Scheffert’s reporting that her actions had been in any way unusual.
The moment they were alone, Emma pounced on the shopping bag. ‘What did you get for me, Mommy?’
‘Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.’ It was her standard line, but Emma giggled nonetheless.
Noelle sat down cross-legged on the carpeted floor, and Emma immediately plunked down in her lap, so forcefully Noelle was left breathless. But she didn’t mind. Watching her five-year-old rustle through the shopping bag, delighting in each gift, she’d never felt more content.
Impossibly Emma seemed untouched by her ordeal. It was more than Noelle could have hoped for. It was more than she’d imagined the heavens would allow. She found herself wanting to speak in whispers so as not to break the spell.
An hour and a half later, Emma had tired of playing old maid and go fish with the cards Noelle had brought and was now absorbed in styling Barbie’s long blond hair. The doll, her head sprouting every last one of the butterfly clips, resembled a patient being prepped for a CAT scan.
‘Mommy, when are we going home to Nana’s?’ Emma asked.
Noelle felt her throat catch. ‘Oh, sweetie. I’m afraid you can’t come with me. Not today.’
Emma looked up, her clear, trusting blue eyes clouding over. ‘How come?’
Because your monster of a father won’t allow it.
Noelle blinked hard and forced a smile that felt as if it had been carved into her face with broken glass. ‘You remember when we first went to stay at Nana’s, right after she got home from the hospital?’
Emma nodded vigorously. ‘We has to take care of her ’cause she went to the doctor and got a op
… opraisin.’
‘That’s right. An operation. But there was another reason, too. Remember when I told you that daddy and I couldn’t live together anymore?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Emma seemed to take it for granted that mommies and daddies didn’t always live together. A sign of the time, Noelle supposed. In her daughter’s Montessori class, at least a third of the kids’ parents were divorced. ‘Daddy said that was before and that things are different now.’