Page 82 of Courtroom Drama
It tilts the axis of their lives—and this case—completely.
I have no way to fact-check any of this, of course. I have no phone, no access to the internet. I can’t bring it to Judge Gillespy or the attorneys because it’s something I know outside of the trial. And even if it is true, that they were both in the same state at the same time, it doesn’t prove that they ever met, let alone that she was with him when she disappeared. Perhaps it’s far-fetched. Still, my mind fuses both situationsinto one. And this information, this secret, burns a hole in my pocket and lights a flame of tension in my gut at once.
Having nothing to do with this information, this theory, this... whatever it is... I sit on it. Frustrated, I press my hands under my thighs and tuck it away, knowing I likely won’t ever know if there’s any truth to be had here.
I’ve missed some of Margot’s testimony, though I catch that they are still discussing Joe’s cremation. I force myself to refocus.
“If Mr. Kitsch made this request to be cremated, why was it never noted to Mr. Windham, his business manager? Or anyone, for that matter?”
“He toldme. I was his wife. There was no reason to have to do more than that.” Margot tries but fails to hide her consternation, her tone clipped, and it’s a glimpse of who she is on the show.
D.A. Stern turns his back to Margot and looks instead to the jury box as he asks his next question. “Have you fulfilled this alleged wish of Joe’s? To take his ashes back to the Maldives?”
“No, I haven’t,” Margot says, eyeing his back. I half expect her to pull a knife from some secret compartment under her clothes and fling it between his shoulder blades based on her scowl alone.
D.A. Stern turns back to her. “Why not?” he says with forced incredulity.
“I’ve been a bit busy,” she states, and there’s a caustic chuckle from the gallery.
D.A. Stern and Margot stare at each other in a loaded exchange, and I can’t quite determine either’s aim in the silence. Margot, still fixated on D.A. Stern, softens, as if remembering something or someone’s whispered a directive in her ear. She releases her shoulders, her lips, her eyebrows. Her eyes round. She speaks before D.A. Stern can stop her. “I miss him.” Her voice cracks. “I miss his touch. I miss feeling his hand against mine. I miss the charge of it. I miss his kiss. I wish for his touch more than anything.” Her voice is trembling, an unsteady wobble. A plaintive cry.
D.A. Stern calls out, “No further questions,” over Margot’s words, but she’s the one with the mic.
I watch Margot before me as she seemingly breaks. Her perfect posture slumps and her eyes look more wilted than anything.
Durrant Hammerstead redirects, as I imagined he would. He wants the last impression with this his most important witness.
“Margot,” he says, his tone noticeably smoother, carrying an added layer of something delicate. “After everything Joe put you through, did you still love him?”
I lean forward, eyes fixed on Margot’s, though I catch the line of a deep swallow in her throat. She presses her eyes shut before realigning her attention to her attorney. “Joe and I were married for twenty-four years. It’s a long time. I loved him, I hated him, and felt everything in between during our time together. That’s marriage.” She looks at the jury, and my pulse quickens when we make eye contact. Her words strike me as ruefully honest. It would have been easy for her to take the stand as the weeping widow who made her husband perfect in death. Instead, she is... subtle.
She speaks to me as if we were seated beside each other. “After you’ve been with someone awhile, you tend not to see them anymore. They can become this bodily mass that exists around you. But every once in a while, I’d look up and catch sight of him just as he was entering a room or telling a joke at a party, and for the briefest instant I’d forget who he was and think...Wow, look at that charming, mysterious guy.Those were the moments when I remembered why I loved this man, why I married him.” She turns her attention back to Durrant Hammerstead. “He was with me in every best moment of my life. The ones I will always look back on with tenderness. So yes, I still very much loved him. Despite it all.” She swipes at the outer corner of her left eye with the length of her pointer finger. “AndI have missed him every single day since he left.”
I turn to Damon, and he looks down at me, his eyes pulsing like a kaleidoscope. The intensity of his gaze causes a chill across every inch of my body.
Damon’s leg touches mine and it doesn’t feel accidental. There is a spurt of electricity—the attraction of a positive and negative charge. The surge of our undeniable connection.
I have missed him every single day since he left.
Before us sits a woman who can never experience her lover’s touch again, despite a desperate desire for it. All the while, I’ve been fighting against the feel of the man beside me. Idohave a second chance.
The defense rests its case.
39.
Oral Arguments (n., phrase)
presentation of a case before a court by spoken word
activities of the tongue
There’s so much ready to burst out of me, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know where to place any of it if it does. Having Margot on the stand today, in some grand finale to the two weeks we’ve spent on this case, it’s as though my heart is strapped to a gurney, having met its limit.
In the van back to the Singer Suites, we emerge from the courtroom’s underground garage, and I’m surprised to see the sky ashen, fat raindrops splattering against the windows like thick tears. We’re quiet during the ride, all of us seemingly spent or lost in thought about what happened in the courtroom today and over the last two weeks. I glance back and see Xavier, usually the most upbeat of us all, with his head bent back against the headrest, eyes shut. Luis, my older jury seatmate, is fast asleep, mouth ajar with his arms crossed in front of him.
I stare out at the street, the van’s silence amplified by the hard rain outside. When we reach the approximate halfway point to the hotel, Damon beside me removes his jacket and places it on his lap, where it flows across the small space between us and over my right leg. Underneath it, his hand finds mine, cups it. There’s a surge across me as our fingers twine, his curling to my palm.
I turn and look at him, but he stares ahead, out the front windshield.
