Nolan Trilogy

by Selena Kitt

  Leah had had enough. She sat bolt upright, protesting out loud, “That’s not true!”

  Judge Solomon frowned, glancing in her direction. “Mrs. Nolan, please be seated.”

  Leah leaned forward, feeling Rob’s hand on her shoulder. “Your honor I’ve never even smoked a cigarette!”

  “Enough!” The judge banged his gavel, making her jump. “So help me, you’ll be held in contempt! Do you understand?”

  She nodded, too afraid to speak, shrinking down against her husband’s side.

  “Mrs. Nolan—do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Leah croaked, clearing her throat and repeating it. “Yes, Judge. I’m sorry.”

  Donald gave her a stern look too and Leah felt her mother’s hand in hers, squeezing, reassuring, as the questioning resumed.

  “Did you or did you not inform Mrs. Nolan of her rights?”

  “All the girls at Magdalene House are informed,” the ghoul snapped. “They sign a statement of rights upon their admission. It’s kept in their file.”

  “Did you read Mrs. Nolan those rights?”

  The ghoul looked directly at Leah. “It would be Mrs. Nolan’s responsibility to do so.”

  “So you don’t know if Mrs. Nolan read the statement of rights?”

  The ghoul threw up her hands. “She signed a statement of rights. It’s in her file. Would you like to see it?”

  “No, thank you, I’ve seen it. Mr. Talley was kind enough to send me a copy.” Donald leaned against the railing of the witness box, like they were just having a conversation, asking, “Did you tell Mrs. Nolan she had six months to change her mind?”

  The ghoul rebuffed him. “That information is in the statement of rights.”

  “Did you inform Mrs. Nolan that her baby had already been promised to an adoptive couple?”

  “No I did not.”

  Leah gaped at her. Now she wasn’t just avoiding his questions. That was a flat out lie. She felt her mother squeeze her hand again, a warning, and she looked down at her lap, trying to keep from jumping out of her seat again.

  “Did you tell Mrs. Nolan she’d be responsible for the hospital bills, and she’dhave to pay them before she would be allowed to leave with her baby?”

  “Of course not.”

  Another lie.

  “Did you tell Mrs. Nolan there was social assistance available to her if she wanted to keep her baby?”

  “That information is in the statement of rights.”

  “Of course, you said that.” Donald gave a nod, turning as if he was done, and then turning back again. “Did you happen to give a copy of those rights to Mrs. Nolan?”

  “They’re in her file.”

  “So you said, but did she get a copy?” Donald asked. “She’s an adult, she can sign a legally binding contract. Did you give her a copy of that contract?”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Donald nodded. “Was Mrs. Nolan offered independent legal counsel to explain the legal document to her and protect her rights? Was she informed of the legal ramifications of what she was signing?”

  The ghoul blinked at him. “Mrs. Nolan is an adult, as you said, Mr. Highbrow.”

  “Being an adult doesn’t exclude you from having the right to legal counsel.”

  “We don’t provide legal counsel,” the ghoul replied. “It would be up to Mrs. Nolan to retain legal counsel, if she wanted it.”

  “Was legal counsel present when Mrs. Nolan signed the adoption agreement?”

  “No.”

  “Was anyone else present? Any witnesses?”

  “No.”

  “Did you inform Mrs. Nolan of what she was signing?”

  “Of course.”

  “You didn’t tell her she was signing hospital discharge papers?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Donald nodding, satisfied. “Thank you, Mrs. Goulden. You may step down.”

  When the ghoul passed them, smirking and triumphant, Leah squeezed her mother’s hand so hard she left crescent shaped marks on her poor palm from her nails.

  “I’d like to call Rebecca Daley to the stand, your honor.”

  Leah looked at Rob, her brows drawn together. She had no idea who that was, and from the confused look on his face, he didn’t either. Why hadn’t the lawyer told them about her?

  Someone passed them on the left, approaching the witness stand, and Leah watched the girl walk, something familiar about her, but she wasn’t sure what. When Rebecca took the stand, sitting in the witness box and putting her hand on the Bible, Leah’s jaw dropped, looking over at Erica, and her sister grinned, giving her a thumbs-up.

  Elizabeth.

  They were all assigned fake names at Magdalene House, and the nuns reused everything, including their names, so there was always a new Jean or a new Lily moving in. After little Lizzie—Carolyn—had given birth, a new Elizabeth had arrived, a haughty girl no one liked with dark, short bobbed hair and a scandalous rose tattoo on her thigh.

  It was the rose tattoo that had allowed Leah to identify her at the Mary Magdalene ritual, strapped on the cross beside Erica, dressed in red instead of white, her belly huge. She was due right around the same time as Leah, and had given birth after the ritual, she remembered, maybe a day or two before Leah had gone into labor with Grace.

  But what in the world could she contribute here, to Donald’s case? Leah had no idea, and she watched, they all did, as Donald questioned his new witness, establishing her history, that she lived in Ann Arbor and attended catholic school there, she was the daughter of a prominent local politician, and she had been at Magdalene House with Leah, sharing a room with her at the house for a brief time.

  “You shared another room with Mrs. Nolan, didn’t you, Rebecca?”

  “Only for a few hours,” she said. “I was supposed to go home, but I spiked a fever and the doctors wouldn’t release me. They’d already filled my private room, so they put me in one of the other rooms until they could get me a new one.”

  “So you were in the same room as Mrs. Nolan?”

  “Yes. There were lots of other girls too. I think they had ten of us crowded in there. It was… deplorable.” Rebecca wrinkled her nose in distaste and Leah remembered why they hadn’t liked the “new Elizabeth” much when she arrived. She always got special treatment, but now that Leah knew who her father was, it made much more sense.

  “So where were you, in relation to Mrs. Nolan?”

  “I was in the bed next to her.”

  Leah blinked in disbelief. It must have only been a few hours—she didn’t remember Elizabeth—Rebecca—being there at all. But she did remember the curtain next to her being closed. She assumed the girl next to her just wanted privacy to feed her baby.

  “Did you know Mrs. Nolan?” Donald asked.

  “Only as Lily. And I was Elizabeth. They gave us fake names.” She wrinkled her pretty, pert nose at that too. “But I knew who she was. We stayed in the same room at Magdalene House.”

  “Did you talk to Mrs. Nolan when you were transferred in her hospital room?”

  “No.” She made a face. “And I wasn’t transferred. It was just a holding area until they could find another private room for me because the idiots gave mine away. Anyway, I kept my curtain closed. I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Did you happen to overhear a conversation between Mrs. Goulden and Mrs. Nolan—the girl you knew as Lily?”

  Rebecca looked straight at the ghoul, her gaze never wavering. “Yes, I did.”

  “Objection!” Frank jumped up, waving his yellow legal pad. “Hearsay!”

  “You need to go back to law school, Frank,” the judge said wryly. “That’s direct testimony.”

  “But… but...” Frank fumbled, flustered. “But she heard it through a curtain!”

  Judge Solomon looked at him over his glasses for a long time, and finally he just shook his head and said, “Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Highbrow.” />
  “What did you hear, Rebecca?”

  “I heard the ghoul—Joan Goulden—ask Lily—er, Mrs. Nolan, that girl.” Rebecca pointed to Leah, who was sitting on the edge of her seat, eyes wide, heart racing in her chest.

  Donald Highbrow turned to the court stenographer. “Let the record show the witness has identified Leah Nolan.”

  “I heard her ask Leah to sign hospital discharge papers.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “I am.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I heard her.” Rebecca blinked at him, giving him an exasperated look. “She even said the nurses asked her to do it. The ghoul said, ‘The nurses are so busy, they asked me to have you sign the discharge papers before you leave.’ It was clear as day. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past her. She did the same thing to me.”

  The whole room was silent and Leah thought she could hear her own heart beating, like a big bass drum in her ears. It was deafening.

  “Objection!” Frank jumped up so fast, several people gasped in surprise. Leah was still too stunned to say anything. “Irrelevant!”

  Judge Solomon shook his head. “Nope. I’ll allow it. Go ahead, Donald.”

  “The ghoul—I mean, Mrs. Goulden—” Several people tittered at Donald’s mistake. “She did the same thing to you? What do you mean?”

  “She tricked me. She knew I wanted to keep my baby, and she didn’t want me to keep it. She tricked me!” Rebecca stared down the ghoul, whose face was red, even with all the makeup coverage. “Except instead of discharge papers, she told me I was signing permission for the doctors to commit an autopsy.”

  Donald’s eyes widened. “An autopsy?”

  “Because she told me my baby was stillborn.”

  Leah made a small, pained sound and felt Rob’s hand in hers, her mother’s still clutching her other one. How could she? How dare she?

  Leah might not have liked Rebecca—the girl she had known only as “the new Elizabeth”—but when she saw the girl look at her, their eyes locking, she knew their bond went beyond like or dislike. This wasn’t about something so petty. They were both mothers, and they had been denied their rights as mothers by the same woman.

  Donald let the judge absorb the information before he leaned in and asked gently, “And was your baby stillborn, Rebecca?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The girl’s eyes were blazing with triumph when she looked across the courtroom at the ghoul. “Because my father got my baby back.”

  “Your father, the senator?”

  “That’s right.” Rebecca had clearly lived a life of privilege. It was the same attitude that had rubbed all the girls the wrong way at Magdalene House. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t human, that she didn’t have feelings. Leah saw it on her face when she told Donald, “When my Daddy visited me, I told him they said my baby died, but I knew he didn’t die. I heard him cry. I was drugged, I know—they had me on something really weird. But I heard him cry, I know I did.”

  “Did your father pursue this matter for you, Rebecca?”

  She scoffed. The idea! “He hired people to pursue it. And they found my baby.”

  “Thank you, Rebecca.” Donald looked over his shoulder at the older lawyer. “Frank? Your witness.”

  Frank didn’t even get up from his table. He just sat back and muttered, “I have no questions, Your Honor.”

  “She’s lying!” The ghoul came rushing up the aisle, past where Leah and her family were sitting, rushing the witness box in a rage. “This little slut is lying!”

  The ghoul turned her fury on the lawyer for the state next. “Frank! Don’t you dare just sit there and let that little trollop get away with this!”

  Donald Highbrow took a step back as the ghoul stomped toward the judge’s bench, banging her fist on front of it. “This is an outrage! This little whore is a flat-out liar! A compulsive liar in fact!” A sly look came over the ghoul’s face as she looked at Rebecca. “Go ahead, check her file!”

  Donald gave a weary sigh. “Do you want to me to call the rest of the girls in, Your Honor? All of the girls in the hospital room with Mrs. Nolan who witnessed Mrs. Joan Goulden misrepresenting the documents she asked her client to sign?”

  Judge Solomon looked from Rebecca, out into the courtroom to where Leah was sitting, and then back to the ghoul, who was still fuming and sputtering in front of him about sluts and whores and trollops and liars.

  “That won’t be necessary.” The gavel came down, a sharp, sudden sound, making Leah jump in her seat. “This court rules for the plaintiff. Baby… Baby...” Judge Solomon looked down at his file. “Baby Grace shall be returned to her mother.”

  The whole courtroom exploded in cheers—not just Leah and Rob and her mother and Erica and Clay, who were all hugging and laughing, but everyone who had been watching the drama unfold before them. Leah couldn’t believe it, feeling the finality of the judge’s statement in every cell of her body.

  She turned to Rob, eyes bright, as if to ask, “Did you hear that too?” but the look of relief and joy on his face told her that he had heard it too—she wasn’t dreaming. Their daughter was coming home. She threw her arms around his neck, laughing and crying at the same time, and he rocked her, whispering words she couldn’t hear but she didn’t care. Grace was theirs, now and forever.

  Grace was returning home.

  Leah saw the ghoul out of the corner of her eye, storming over to where Frank sat with his head in his hands and they put their heads together, plotting she was sure of it, while the judge excused Rebecca as a witness. Leah looked up as she walked over, standing to take the girl’s outstretched hand.

  “Thank you,” Leah whispered, still not quite clear on how Rebecca had gotten involved, but she had never been so grateful to someone in her life. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Rebecca gave a satisfied nod, glancing over at the ghoul. “She stole my baby too. Only she told me he was dead.”

  “But you knew he wasn’t.” Leah’s eyes filled with tears at the thought.

  Rebecca looked back at her, eyes softening. “A mother knows.”

  They both smiled, an understanding passing between them that transcended hierarchy and class and judgment. They were both mothers, and they both knew exactly how it felt.

  Donald came over, a giant grin on his face, and Leah hugged him without a second thought.

  “I don’t know how you did that,” Leah said. “It was like magic. You pulled Rebecca out of your hat just like a rabbit!”

  “Well don’t tell anyone but I was bluffing about all the other witnesses. Rebecca was our only trump card.” Donald laughed, hugging her back and planting a fond kiss on the top of her head before letting her go. “Well I had a fairy godmother. Erica and Clay helped me track her down. With Father Michael’s help. So it was magic, plus Nancy Drew and her Hardy Boy over there, with a sprinkle of divine intervention. And luck. Definitely a dash of luck.”

  “I’m going to have to hear this story!” Leah looked over at Erica and Clay, bemused. “How in the world did you know she’d been in the room. I didn’t even know!”

  “I interviewed the nurses,” Donald replied. “There was a young nurse named Cathy who remembered you, and she remembered Elizabeth too, but she couldn’t remember her real name, just her Magdalene name.”

  The judge banged his gavel and the commotion began to die down. Judge Solomon banged it again, making sure they all knew he was serious.

  “I have other cases to hear today,” the judge said. “Can we please have quiet in the courtroom?”

  Leah was about to ask Donald what was next, how did they go about getting Grace back? But Frank took advantage of the opportunity to speak up.

  “Your honor!” Frank stood, clearing his throat. “May I approach the bench?”

  “No you may not.” Judge Solomon glared at the table where Frank and the ghoul sat. “And you’d better keep that h
arpy away from my bench if you know what’s good for you. She’s already looking at a perjury charge. I can add contempt to that faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”

  Frank tried again. “There is still the matter of the child’s well-being to consider.”

  The judge looked at the lawyer over his glasses, incredulous. “I’ve already considered it, Frank. I’ve ruled on the matter. The child is going to be returned to her mother.”