On the way home, Dolores sat beside me in the car, quiet for a long time, and then she said she was not frightened of the courtroom. She said she was frightened only of forgetting something important, or of saying it wrong, and I told her she would not, because she had already told me the story once, and she had told it clearly then, and she would tell it clearly again. That was what she was going to do, and I was grateful for it, more grateful than I could ever say.
Chapter 27
— The Night Before Court
I could not sleep the night before court. I lay in bed for a long time, listening to the house settle around me, listening to the clock in the hallway ticking away the hours, and every time I closed my eyes, my mind filled up with the next day. I thought about the courthouse, and about the courtroom, and about Veronica sitting on the other side of the room with her lawyer. I thought about Oliver standing up to speak, and about Rosalind and Elspeth and Dolores taking their turns to tell the truth. I thought about the judge, listening, and about the form with my shaky signature on it, sitting in a folder on Oliver's desk. I thought about all of it, and then I thought about it again, until I gave up on sleep and got out of bed.
I went downstairs in my bare feet, and I made tea I did not drink, and I stood at the kitchen window looking out at the garden in the dark. The tree was a black shape against the sky, and the flower beds were shadows, and the whole garden looked still and waiting, as if it knew tomorrow mattered. I thought about all the mornings Poppy and I had spent out there, and about the afternoons when she had played under that tree, and about how much of our life together had happened in that small patch of ground. I thought about Meredith, too, and about how she had loved that garden, and how she had planted some of those flowers herself, back when Poppy was still a baby and the world had seemed simpler.
After a while, I went to Meredith's desk and opened the drawer where I kept her notebook. I had read it before, more than once, but that night I needed to read it again, because it was the closest thing I had to hearing her voice. I sat at the desk with the lamp on low, and I turned the pages slowly, reading her neat, careful handwriting, reading about the night Poppy was born and about the young woman in the next room who had given birth on the same night. Meredith had written about how she had heard the baby crying through the wall, and about how she had wondered who that young woman was, and about how she had hoped, even then, that both babies would be loved and safe. She had not known then what would happen six years later. She could not have known. But she had written with such hope, and such kindness, that reading her words that night steadied me in a way nothing else had.
I read until my eyes grew heavy, and then I closed the notebook and put it back in the drawer, and I went upstairs to check on Poppy. She was asleep in her bed, lying on her back with one arm thrown over her head, breathing slow and even, her face peaceful in the soft light from the hallway. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, short and soft, with the new curls just beginning to show at the edges, and her dolls were lined up neatly on the chair beside her bed, as if they were standing guard. I stood in the doorway for a long time, watching her sleep, and I thought about how much she trusted me. She trusted me to keep her safe. She trusted me to tell the truth. She trusted me to be there in the morning, and the morning after that, and every morning after that. That trust was the most important thing I owned, and I meant to keep it.
I went back to my own room, and I lay down again, and this time I did not try to force myself to sleep. I lay there and thought about what I would say in court, if the judge asked me to speak. I would say that I was Poppy's father, and that I loved her, and that I had made a mistake in a hospital bed, signing a paper I had not read, because I had trusted the woman beside me. I would say that I had learned from that mistake, and that I would never make it again. I would say that Poppy was safe with me, and with Dolores, and with the people who loved her, and that she did not need a guardian she had never chosen, or a mother she had never had. I would say it simply, because the truth was simple, and I did not need to dress it up.