A Gift of Grace

by Cooper, Inglath

  He glanced at the house where the shades were drawn on every window except for the kitchen, where she had observed his visits. His gaze settled on her again. She put a hand to her hair, remembering then that she hadn’t washed it in days. Glanced down at the khaki pants and white blouse she’d fallen asleep in last night and hadn’t bothered to change this morning.

  “Catherine,” he began, then stopped and turned toward the tractor. “I’m sorry,” he said, not facing her. “I’m sorry.”

  He turned the key and the engine growled to life. She stood in the same spot, watching him drive across the field, smoothing a hand across her wrinkled pants. He didn’t believe her. And for the first time, she didn’t blame him. It was a lie. All a lie. She no longer believed herself.

  THE NEXT WEEK PASSED as if someone had put life on fast-forward.

  Sophie tried not to listen for the phone, tried to tell herself not to hope that Caleb might have a change of heart and call this whole thing off.

  Wednesday arrived with no such call, and she dressed for the hearing with hands that shook to the point she could barely button the white blouse she’d chosen to wear under her navy suit.

  Darcy arrived at the house just before eight, having agreed to stay with Grace while Sophie was gone. Somehow, she didn’t want to take her to preschool today, wanted her to be with someone who could remind her that Mama would be home soon.

  After setting Grace up at the table with her bowl of Cheerios, Sophie leaned over and kissed the top of her silky hair, lingering a moment longer than normal.

  “Be a good girl today?”

  “I will, Mama.”

  Darcy put a hand on Sophie’s shoulder, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “I’d better get going,” Sophie said, willing herself not to cry in front of Grace.

  Darcy followed Sophie to the front door. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Come here,” Darcy said, pulling her into her arms and hugging her hard. “I’ll be thinking about you every minute.”

  Sophie bit her lip, nodded and then hurried out to the car. Inside, with the doors closed, the tears came, and she cried all the way to the courthouse because she simply could not help it.

  SO, CLEARLY, SHE HAD BEEN wrong to hope that her visit to Caleb’s house might have made a difference.

  Any softening she might have seen in him that night was gone this morning, in its place the same expressionless mask he had worn before.

  His mother again sat in the back of the courtroom, alone. Sophie sat next to her attorney, glancing over her shoulder at the door a dozen times before it finally opened, and her aunt and uncle walked through.

  Ruby wore a red dress with black buttons up the front. Her hair had the marks of a recent perm, her nails painted a bright crimson. Next to her, Uncle Roy looked less certain, as if he weren’t at all sure why they were here. His shoulders weren’t as straight as they had once been. He dropped his gaze to the hat in his hand. Aunt Ruby had a grim expression on her face.

  Irene had called late yesterday afternoon to say she had met with the two of them. They’d gone over what questions she planned to ask them, and Irene had assured Sophie that everything would go smoothly.

  They took a seat midway back, neither of them looking Sophie’s way. A stray barb of loneliness struck her, and it seemed particularly ironic considering that the only family she had in the world, aside from Grace, was here in the courtroom with her.

  Sophie straightened her spine against her chair and refocused her energy on getting through this morning. Seconds would form minutes. Minutes would inch into hours. She could do this. There had been other difficult moments in her life. Other times when she had been alone. She would get through this on her own.

  She always had.

  THE HEARING BEGAN PROMPTLY at ten o’clock with the entrance of Judge Hartley into the courtroom. Everyone stood, and the judge took her seat behind the bench without looking at either Sophie or Caleb. She called both attorneys up front, spoke to them in tones low enough that no one else could hear and then nodded once in dismissal.

  Both attorneys returned to their seats.

  “These proceedings will begin with Mr. Tucker’s attorney,” Judge Hartley said. “I would like to hear Mr. Tucker’s side of this. I understand he has declined the opportunity for a character witness to speak for him. Once Ms. Donovan is finished with Mr. Tucker, Ms. Archer will proceed with Dr. Owens’s character witness and then Dr. Owens herself. That will comprise the first part of this hearing. Ms. Donovan?”

  Amanda Donovan stood and said, “Thank you, Your Honor. I would like to call Caleb Tucker to the stand.”

  “Proceed,” the judge said with a nod.

  Caleb stood, walked to the witness chair, raised his hand to be sworn in. Sophie’s eyes were drawn to his face, now set.

  “Could you please tell us about your wife’s death, Mr. Tucker?” Ms. Donovan asked.

  At this, Sophie’s gaze returned to his face and something inside her clenched tight with dread. He was silent for a few moments, as if reaching for strength. When he spoke, he was matter-of-fact. “She had been to the mall to buy a birthday present,” he said. “A man broke into her car and hid in the backseat. He abducted her.”

  “And what happened after that, Mr. Tucker?”

  Several minutes passed before he answered, his voice thick with emotion when he finally did. “My wife was raped. And beaten.”

  “And she was found where?”

  “Behind a Dumpster. At an interstate rest stop.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tucker,” Ms. Donovan said, looking as if she regretted the questions she had to ask. “I know this is difficult.”

  Caleb did not acknowledge the words, but sat stone still, his jaw visibly locked, as if willing himself through each moment.

  “What happened after your wife was found?”

  “She was alive. But not conscious. She never came to.”

  “And a few weeks later, the doctors discovered your wife was pregnant.”

  “Yes.”

  “With your child, Mr. Tucker?”

  The courtroom had gone completely still.

  “No,” he said.

  “And how was this ascertained?”

  “Eventually, by blood work.”

  “The child your wife carried was the result of the rape?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was abortion an option?”

  He shook his head. “My wife would never have had an abortion. She had very strong views against it.”

  “And so your wife was kept on life support to allow the child in question to be born?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “If you could please speak for the record, Mr. Tucker,” Judge Hartley said, her voice soft.

  “Yes. The doctors gave us no hope of her recovery. When the baby was close to full term, they performed a cesarean.”

  “The child born was a little girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you chose to put the baby up for adoption?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell us why, Mr. Tucker?”

  Again, he didn’t answer for several long moments. “I don’t know that I can put into words the place I was in after what happened to Laney. She was my wife. I loved her.” He stopped, drew in a ragged breath, and then said, “To lose her that way… I wasn’t sure that I could go on living myself.”

  Caleb’s attorney stood silent, letting the words settle over the courtroom. “And why have you now changed your mind about that decision, Mr. Tucker?”

  “Because I believe I didn’t do the right thing by my wife.”

  “Could you explain that?”

  He looked down and then lifted his head, setting his gaze on some distant point at the back of the courtroom. “When Laney died, I couldn’t see past the very next moment.”

  “I think, clearly, anyone here can understand that, Mr. Tucker. But your decision to put your wife’s chi
ld up for adoption has impacted other lives, including the child herself.”

  “That’s true,” Caleb said. “There is nothing right about any of this. Not about what happened to Laney. Not what happened to the child she gave birth to or to Dr. Owens, who adopted her.”

  “What do you have to offer this child, Mr. Tucker?”

  “A connection to her mother,” he said. “A life in the place where her mother would have wanted her to grow up.”

  “Would your wife have loved this child, Mr. Tucker?”

  “Yes, she would have,” he said without hesitation.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I knew my wife. For her, the child would be innocent.”

  Caleb’s gaze swung to Sophie for the first time since he’d begun speaking, and she was sure his eyes softened.

  She glanced away, sudden emotion rocking through her. Don’t cry. Not here. Not now. She began praying for strength.

  Ms. Donovan continued. “And you harbor no ill feelings, Mr. Tucker, about the fact that you are not the child’s biological father?”

  “No,” he said. “Laney’s child is innocent. She is innocent.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tucker. I have no more questions.”

  Caleb returned to his seat. He glanced at Sophie, and in that moment when their gazes met, it was as if the two of them were on a boat in the middle of the sea, swamping waves all around. Though she couldn’t explain it, she had the feeling he would have saved them both if he could.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IRENE ARCHER, Sophie’s attorney, stood and called as her first witness Ruby Murphy.

  Ruby walked straight-backed to the front of the courtroom and took the stand with an air of long sufferance. She never glanced at Sophie but focused her gaze on Irene and kept it there. “If I might just ask you a few questions, Mrs. Owens.”

  Ruby nodded. “Yes.”

  “Sophie Angle Owens is your niece. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, Sophie is my niece.”

  “And Sophie came to live with you at what age?”

  “She was eight.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Her parents were killed.”

  “And how were they related to you?”

  “Sophie’s mother was my sister.”

  “Did Sophie have any siblings?”

  “One. Jenny. She was killed with her parents.”

  The words pinged at the cap Sophie had long ago placed on memories of her family. She never let herself think of them. It was as if they had belonged to someone else’s life. A sharp sense of loss cut through her now. A scorching rush of pain left in its wake blisters of regret and a sharply etched memory of her mother standing at the kitchen sink. Singing as she worked, throwing smiles at Sophie where she sat at the kitchen table stringing green beans from their summer garden.

  “And you were Sophie’s only remaining family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell us, please, what kind of child Sophie was?”

  “Quiet. She usually preferred books to our company.”

  To Sophie’s ears, the disapproval rang out clearly, even though her aunt’s words were delivered with a half smile.

  “Dr. Owens endured a great deal of loss early in her life, then?”

  “Yes, I suppose she did.”

  Again, Sophie heard the grudging acknowledgment in the admission, tempered as it was with the tone she remembered too well. This world’s not an easy place, Sophie. Don’t think you’re the only one with a cross to bear.

  Such words were the closest Ruby had ever come to consoling Sophie over the loss of her parents and sister. And when Uncle Roy—undemonstrative as he was—might have put a reassuring hand to her shoulder, it was always pulled back at Ruby’s quick criticism. “She doesn’t need your babying, Roy. What she needs is to quit feeling sorry for herself.”

  Ruby cleared her throat now and continued. “As a child, Sophie said she never wanted to be a mother.”

  Irene glanced up from her notepad, clearly surprised by the comment. “And why was that?” she asked carefully.

  “Before her death, Sophie’s mother, Sarah, was not the most—” Ruby paused, looking as if she were searching for a palatable word. “Consistent mother.”

  To Sophie, the statement was baldly mocking. Again said with a soft auntlike smile, but it was impossible to miss the edge beneath. Irene frowned, piercing her witness with a dagger glare. “And your point, Mrs. Owens?”

  “My point is that, surprisingly, Sophie did decide to be a mother. And I’m glad that Sarah’s lack of mothering skills didn’t carry over to her daughter. I tried very hard to be a good role model for her.”

  Sophie swallowed, pinching the palm of her left hand until the pain distracted her from the hurt that exploded inside her. This, then, was why her aunt had agreed to come here today. How could Sophie have been such a fool? Had she thought anything had changed? That Ruby might have softened her heart for the niece she had never wanted? Whose presence she’d resented every day of Sophie’s life in her house?

  All these years, she must have hoped for a way to pay Sophie back for what she considered her lack of gratitude for giving her a place to live. Sophie could not call it a home, because to her, it had never been one.

  “That will be all, Mrs. Owens,” Irene said, her expression blank.

  Ruby made her way back to her seat without once looking in Sophie’s direction. She heard Irene call her name, stood and made her way to the stand as if pulled by invisible strings. She answered all of the basic questions—name, place of birth, age, occupation. Numbness had removed the life from her voice, and she heard the robotlike lack of emotion in her responses. Irene’s steady gaze held its own silent message: forget what you’ve just heard and speak from your heart.

  Sophie put her thoughts on Grace, blanked from her mind Ruby’s painful vitriol.

  “Tell us about your daughter,” Irene said.

  Sophie pressed her lips together, and then said, “I used to imagine what it would be like to have a child. And I think a lot of what I expected is actually true. But there were so many things I had no way of knowing. How wonderful it is to hear ‘I love you, Mommy,’ every night when I put her to bed. How amazing it is to see her gently pick up a moth from the sidewalk and put it under a bush where she thinks it will be safe. How rewarding it is to see her learning how to do things, swim, climb the ladder to her playhouse. With Grace, I feel like I’ve been given a chance to see the world with new eyes. She has been an incredible blessing to me.”

  “I have one question for you, Dr. Owens,” Irene said. “Could you please tell this court why you think Grace should remain in your custody?”

  It was a question with no easy answer. Sophie glanced down at her intertwined hands and then lifted her gaze to the center of the room. “I did not give birth to my daughter. But I’m the person she asks to blow on her boo-boos, the one she asks to hold her when she’s tired. I’m the one who knows she likes her toast cut in triangles instead of rectangles, that she likes grape jelly but not strawberry. I know she can’t go to sleep at night without the scrap of a blanket she calls Blanky. These are the things that make up her world. I did not give birth to her, but I am the only mother she has ever known, and while I understand Mr. Tucker’s rethinking of his decision to give her up for adoption, I believe with all my heart that Grace should remain with me.”

  Irene nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Owens.”

  “You may step down, Dr. Owens,” Judge Hartley said.

  Sophie returned to her seat and clasped her shaking hands in her lap.

  “We will adjourn for lunch and reconvene at two o’clock.” Judge Hartley stood then and left the room.

  Sophie glanced over her shoulder. Her aunt and uncle had already gone. Of course they had not waited for her.

  IRENE TOOK HER to a little place near the courthouse where most of the attorneys ate lunch. Sophie ordered a salad, which she didn’t eat. Irene ord
ered a sandwich and did equally poor justice to it.

  Sophie didn’t need to ask to know she was worried.

  THEY RETURNED to the courthouse at a quarter to two. The fifteen minutes before the judge returned to the courtroom seemed like fifteen days.

  Sophie sat straight in her chair, as if by forcing herself rigid, she might prevent her world from toppling.

  A door opened. Judge Hartley swept into the room. Everyone stood.

  She indicated that they should sit, her expression grave. “It is this kind of case that makes my job as a judge at times less than ideal. There is nothing black and white here. Many lives are involved that will be damaged in some way by the action of this court. It is my sincerest desire to minimize that damage to the extent that I possibly can. With that in mind, I am going to postpone further testimony and take a less than traditional approach to this very complicated situation.”

  Sophie dug her nails into the palm of her hand, praying the same prayer she had been repeating over and over all morning. Please, dear God. Please don’t take her from me.

  “Clearly, there will be no winners here,” Judge Hartley said. “I should hope both you, Dr. Owens, and you, Mr. Tucker, realize that. I would therefore like to put the weight of this problem on the two of you. I am convinced that Mr. Tucker’s decision to put the child up for adoption was made during a period of overwhelming grief, and I am also convinced that Dr. Owens has been a loving mother to Grace Owens, despite the somewhat regrettable testimony of her aunt.”

  The judge was silent for a moment, before saying, “I am assigning a period of time during which Mr. Tucker will be given visits with Grace. These visits should occur once per week for no less than two days per visit. We will follow this schedule for sixty days and then reconvene here in this courtroom at which time I would like to hear what both of you feel is in the best interest of this child.”

  Sophie squeezed her eyes shut, not sure whether she should cry or breathe a sigh of relief.