Page 80 of Courtroom Drama
“Why not?” Durrant Hammerstead questions.
“Because that would have made the incident public. We valued discretion.”
“And what were the other two situations?”
“The next was when I was pregnant with Emblem. This particularwoman he met in his cycling club. She emailed saying she had been sleeping with Joe for several months and that he deserved to die for what he did.”
The ever-waiting murmur recurs from the gallery.
“What is it she claimed he did that he deserved to die for?”
Margot shakes her head. “She never said.”
Durrant Hammerstead allows a quiet moment to lapse so we can sit with this news, and I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I wonder if that email will be an exhibit me and the other jurors will be able to examine during deliberations. I imagine it will be.
“Did you ever follow up?” he asks eventually.
“No. I hardly saw the point of grabbing lunch or drinks with a woman who wished my husband dead.”
Margot goes on to explain the third woman was a Whole Foods sommelier who showed up at her kids’ school during pickup, claiming Joe had been “with her” for several months.
I had come to terms with Joe as a cheater after Tenley Storms’s testimony, but hearing the details of multiple affairs from Margot’s point of view... I don’t know how she was able to tolerate it. I attempt to swallow down the angry mound in my throat as memories of my father flood my mind.
“So, clearly, there’s a slew of women over the years who have had issues with Joe Kitsch, who have felt scorned by him.”
Judge Gillespy agrees with an objection from D.A. Stern.
I sense Damon’s movement before it begins, and the sheer notion of the innocuous thing he’s about to do causes a sharp zap between my legs. He leans into me as he marks a tally in my notebook. He does it all so achingly slow and deliberate he might as well be running his fingers along my naked body.
Everything in me is heightened after last night, after these past twelve days.Tooheightened. And Damon’s slightest touch is absolutely the crack that can burst the whole dam.
I clear my throat, shift in my seat.
Durrant Hammerstead continues. He pulls at the bottom edges of his suit jacket, though it’s already straight and wrinkle-free. “After anyof these fourteen affairs, did you ever attempt to seriously injure your husband?”
Margot looks to the jury and sets her sights on either me or Damon, I’m not quite sure. “No,” she says.
Then why would she after the last one? I allow myself to go where Durrant Hammerstead leads us.
The courtroom is silent as Margot rubs her lips together, forward and back. The gallery seems to hang on her next words while she concentrates intently on the jury, her eyes roaming purposely among us. Then, in the attentive silence, she catches a tear with her forefinger before it can fall.
The thought I have next is one I can’t shake. Margot can cry on command. It’s a party trick of sorts, which she has demonstrated on the show. The most recent example I can recall was when Alizay’s seven-year-old daughter, Besos, gifted Margot a handmade Christmas ornament of glitter and clay, and Margot feigned touched tears.
I stare at Margot.
Fourteen affairs. A slew of scorned lovers. His ownership of her business.
I could even understand why she might want to burn it all down.
A foreign feeling overtakes me as I evaluate Margot on the stand. I wish I could hug my mom right now. Tell her that I, perhaps for the first time, understand why after all of it she might want a do-over family.
“Margot,” Durrant Hammerstead says, his tone clipped, indicating a change in direction. “Much has been made by the prosecution about your disappearance at sixteen, about where you were and if it significantly impacted you. Your father alluded to the fact that your estrangement from your family came directly after. Can we talk about that?”
I press the tip of my pen to the pad, ready to transcribe every word. Of all the things that have come out in this trial about Margot and Joe and their lives, this is the thing that has nagged at me most.
I need to know that whatever happened in her teenage years didn’t wholly determine who she would become.
38.
