Page 26 of Courtroom Drama
“He reached across the table, placed his hand on top of hers, and said, ‘It’s not your fault.’ ”
Damon presses his eyebrows together again, listening.
I shake my head lightly. “It wasn’t pointed or derogatory. He meant it. And he said it because he knows her.Knewher,” I correct. “And he knew she would blame herself. His first thought was not only of the baby they just lost. It was also for his wife.”
I stand quietly, pressing my thumbnail into my palm and then releasing, watching the color rush back to the spot of impact. I think he knows what I’ve lost in the courtroom a few days into the trial. The picture-perfect family I invested so much of my time into over the last seven years, shattered with one sharp pull of the curtain. It may not seem so bad to someone else, but he knows why. That after living thebreakdown of my own family, I needed the love story I’ve invested so much time into to be real.
He breaks our connection first, stares out the sliding glass doors with the vacancy in his eyes that seems to come in tense moments. I watch him closely, and it’s clear he’s gone somewhere else entirely. My pulse accelerates, though I’m unsure why.
“Kara died,” he says. His words are delivered so flatly that it takes me a few seconds to register them. When I do, my chest is struck windless and nausea invades from my gut to my throat.
“What?” is all I can seem to manage in return. I’m certain I haven’t heard him right.
He’s silent for a long while, and I don’t know what to do. Kara was barely seven years old when I last saw her.
I picture Kara sitting outside Damon’s bedroom door, listening to our conversations, as she did so often. It was hard to get mad when we’d see her little feet pressed up against the space at the bottom of the door. She was our constant third wheel, always angling to be a part of whatever we had going on.
“It was a year after we moved,” he says, and at once I shut my eyes, fighting back incensed tears.
She waseight.
I think of Gen, barely five months old, and my animosity toward that faultless micro-human, mysister, brings me a flash of fierce shame. “I can’t believe it,” I say, my voice cracking, and at first, I really can’t. How could I have not found out about this? How did no one tell me? But, after they moved, I suppose nothing and no one really connected us anymore. I shut down all social media, and my whole world became intentionally only what was right in front of me. To this day, I have burner accounts, and only for the sheer purpose of followingAMOMcast members and various pop culture accounts.
If only Ihadgoogled him or his family one of those many times I ached to.
He runs his hand down his face. “Turns out she had a heart condition nobody knew about.”
I wince.
“People always seem so interested inhow. More than anything, more than wanting to know about her, about who she was, they want to know how it happened. Morbid curiosity, I suppose.” He rubs at his right earlobe absentmindedly, and I note its blazing red tip. “But you... you knew her.”
I try to swallow down the new wave of nausea flooding my throat.
I’ve wondered about her over the years, of course. Every January thirtieth, on her birthday, I’d acknowledge her new age and wonder how she might be celebrating. I’d imagined her looking more and more like Damon.
Damon was sixteen when his family left, but Kara was just seven. I’m ashamed to admit she was an afterthought during it all. Had I only known what was going to happen... maybe I would have done something differently. Tried harder to stay in touch, with her at least. The nausea in my belly and throat swells, as I think of the last ten years. I cursed Damon, angry at him for leaving, for never tracking me down or making any attempts at reconciliation. I assumed it was because he never cared about me like I did him. I believed he couldn’t get over what had happened between our parents. I never imagined he was dealing with another, far more significant tragedy.
His palm moves to the back of his neck. “When she died, I wanted to call you.” His voice is deeper than just a moment ago, granular. “I needed to hear your voice to help me deal with it. I missed my friend, the person I knew would understand. I wantedyou.”
Without hesitation or thought, I make my way over to him and throw my arms around his neck, press my body into his. I squeeze. I did know her. Iknowhim. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes back, pressing my face into his neck, and my entire body is enveloped by his. He is warm. So warm. He exhales so forcefully as we embrace that it sounds like he’s been holding his breath for ten years. His hand cups the back of my head. In our hold, it is sadness and comfort that surges between us. Since the start of the trial, he has fractured my shell one memory at a time. This feels like the irrevocable shatter.
I have missed him. So, so much. This notion is something that, just three days ago, I never would have been willing to admit to anyone, let alone myself. But it is a fact I can no longer refute.
I’m not exactly sure how long we stay this way, wrapped together. It is a moment of respite. The trial, Kara, the last ten years—all of it goes on pause as we hold each other. When we finally release, he pulls out a chair from the dining table and sits. I follow suit.
I watch Damon, the ache in my chest so expansive I feel as though I may pass out from the pressure.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know. I would have...” I don’t know how to finish the sentence or the thought. What would I have done? Would I have gone to him? Would I have shown up at his door, hoping all the embarrassment, disappointment, and disgust would dissipate, overtaken by the loss? In truth, I probably would have stayed away, out of fear I’d make things worse.
And because I still don’t have the right words, I move my hand across the table and press it atop his. He looks at my hand, then into my eyes, his own eyes expansive and filled with so much I can’t decipher. But now I get it. It is a sadness I’ve noticed in him since we’ve come back together. One he can mask everywhere except his eyes.
I’ve held his hand before. I held it on the bus back to school from a field trip to the Bakersfield College planetarium in the sixth grade when our bus nearly rear-ended a semi and skidded into a ditch on the 178. I held it when he led me blindfolded into his backyard on my fifteenth birthday to a surprise sushi picnic he’d set up for me and my few close friends, who, if we’re being honest, were mostly his. But this is the hand of a man—thicker, rougher—with ten years of life I know nothing about. It’s déjà vu and a brand-new experience rolled into one massive weight in my gut.
Then he says the thing that causes a tremble across the length of my body. “We all just do the best we can with the circumstances we’re given.”
Tears sting at my eyes, and I try desperately to push them back. I don’t want my grief to upset him.
