“No. She didn’t tell me. But I saw her the odd time over the summer. Last summer, that is. And I knew. Looking at her, I could tell she was pregnant. I’d seen her every day almost during the first pregnancy, after all, so I knew.”
“Did you ever confront Heather about this?”
“Once,” he said. “It was in the parking lot at the supermarket. But she denied it. She said she wasn’t pregnant. Only that she’d put on a few pounds because she didn’t have her grandmother around to cook for her anymore, and she wasn’t eating very well. That’s what she said. And I thought, Well, I can’t do anything about it if she won’t tell me the truth.”
Charter nodded sagely. “But you knew that she was no longer seeing Ashley by this time. Did you wonder who the father might be?”
“Sure,” he said uncomfortably. “But she wouldn’t tell me.”
“I see,” Charter said. “So she didn’t volunteer the names of any of her other lovers.”
Judith was up, lightning fast. “I’ll object to that, your honor. We haven’t heard any evidence about any other lover, as Mr. Charter is perfectly well aware.”
Hayes looked irritated, too. “That’s sustained, Mr. Charter. Care to try it again?”
“Thank you,” said Charter, as if the judge had only meant to be helpful. He looked to Stephen again. “Did Heather ever mention another lover whom she was seeing simultaneously with Ashley?”
“I really can’t remember,” Stephen said. “I couldn’t say absolutely, one way or the other.”
“Did she ever mention the name Christopher Flynn, for example?”
Stephen frowned. “Well again, I’m not sure. But it’s possible, I guess.” He looked briefly at Heather, then away.
“So you say it’s possible she mentioned the name Christopher Flynn to you?”
“It could have happened. I don’t remember a specific time, but it could have happened.”
Heather’s back was stiff, her head moving slowly, side to side.
“And do you know who Christopher Flynn is?”
“I’ve never met him,” said Stephen, and with that his direct testimony ended.
With friends like this, Naomi was thinking. It had been increasingly difficult to look at Stephen over the course of his testimony, and now, without Charter to deflect their attention, she understood that they could not look at each other at all. He understood this, too, she saw. He used this moment before Judith rose and addressed him to look studiously at his hands; then, when that was exhausted, rather aimlessly over Naomi’s head. Her friend, or what had always passed for her friend, now irrevocably gone.
One of Judith’s hands reached back to tug at the tail of her jacket. This was her habitual preparatory gesture, her small betrayal of nerves. She was getting to her feet.
“Mr. Trask,” she said evenly, “from your description of my client’s thievery, I take it Heather was the only person in the sports center who had access to towels. Would that have been the case?”
He looked taken aback. “Well no. Of course not.”
“Really? Who else might have been in a position to steal towels?”
“Another employee, I suppose.”
“What about a client? A person who came in to swim or use the squash court?”
He shrugged. “Possible.”
“Maybe one of the moms. You have a lot of moms, don’t you? I understand your infant and pre-school swimming lessons are very popular.”
“They are,” Stephen agreed.
“Moms can get pretty distracted, trying to get their kids dressed after a lesson. Is it possible somebody inadvertently threw a towel in her bag now and then?”
He gave her an unmistakable glare. “It’s possible.”
“In fact, we may not even be talking about the theft of a towel, now that I think of it. Don’t things just occasionally disappear?”
“Oh no,” Stephen said, but he already sounded trapped.
“No?” Judith grinned. She turned to the jury and grinned again. “Am I the only one that happens to? I always thought there must be some law of the universe that says when you put a pair of socks through the wash you end up with only one sock at the other end.”
She rolled her eyes. The jury, appreciatively, tittered.
“In fact, Mr. Trask”—Judith turned to face him again—“you don’t have the slightest bit of evidence that might indicate my client was responsible for the loss of a single towel, do you?”
“She might have taken one,” he said stubbornly. Naomi, in disgust, looked away.
“So might I, the last time I was over at the Goddard Sports Center. In fact,” she grinned rather suddenly, “I think I did.” Judith turned to the jury and shrugged. “By mistake, I assure you.” Then she went quiet, letting the temperature plunge. “But what I don’t understand is what on earth a few missing towels have to do with these horrific and outrageous charges against my client. Or is that all the evidence her accusers can muster against her?”
Charter shot to his feet. “Your honor!”
“All right.” Hayes put up his hand. “Ms. Friedman, you know better than that.”
“I apologize, your honor.” She turned away, and Naomi caught the most fleeting of smiles.
“Mr. Trask, you’ve told us about the confrontation that took place between Sue Deacon and Heather Pratt two years ago. I believe you testified that you were summoned to the scene of this confrontation by the commotion. Is that right?”
“It is,” Stephen said.
“So if you were responding to the noise of what was already in progress, then I take it you were not present to witness the beginning of the conflict.”
He nodded agreement, slowly. “No.”
“So then, you didn’t actually see the beginning, did you?”
“No.”
She turned her head to look at the jury. “Well, that’s interesting. Because from the way you described it, you seemed to know a lot about what actually happened between these two women.”
“I only knew what Heather told me.”
“And what was that?” Judith said. She seemed willing to take the risk, though why, Naomi couldn’t imagine.
“Well, what she said was that Sue just attacked her. But I mean, she would say that, wouldn’t she?”
“Oh,” Judith considered, “you mean, she lied to you about what happened.”
“I didn’t say she lied!” He sounded affronted.
“Well, you must have thought she was lying, otherwise you would have asked Heather why she had initiated the fight, wouldn’t you? And if you had asked her, I’m sure you would have told us what she said to you.”
He was working it through. Naomi, who was a mite quicker, was filled with admiration for Judith.
“I guess I thought it was possible the fight could have happened like she said.”
“I see. And has something happened since then to make you change your mind about Sue Deacon initiating the fight?”
He shrugged. “Well, not really.”
“Then what are we talking about, exactly? A person comes into your sports center and attacks one of your employees, and here we are blaming the person who got attacked? Is that it?”
“They were both fighting,” he insisted a little fiercely. “Heather had her hands on Sue’s arms. I saw that!” His voice was harsh.
“Well, isn’t that where her hands would be if she was trying to hold off an attacker?” Judith asked innocently. “But you mentioned blood, I think.”
“Yes, there was blood.”
“On both parties? Or only on Heather?”
“I only saw Heather. I was taking care of Heather.”
“So you wouldn’t know if Sue Deacon was even hurt at all in the confrontation she initiated.”
“I only saw Heather,” he said morosely. “She had blood coming off her cheek.”
“In fact,” considered Judith, “Heather wanted to report the assault to the police, didn’t she?”
“That’s
right,” Stephen said. “She said that.”
“But you talked her out of it, didn’t you?” Judith, it occurred to Naomi, was enjoying this.
“Yes. But I thought she’d behaved very badly herself. I thought she was disgraceful.”
“Really.” Judith smiled. “That’s odd. Because within an hour of this attack, you were with Heather at Naomi Roth’s place of business, praising her work and her integrity as an employee. I wonder that you would recommend such a violent and dishonest person so highly to another employer.”
He looked studiously at the floor. He did not respond.
“Mr. Trask,” Judith pressed, “you were very supportive of Heather, and helpful to her, even though you disapproved of her attachment to Ashley Deacon. Am I right in saying that?”
Stephen, for an instant, caught Naomi’s eye. “I tried to help her.”
“Were you angry at her for involving herself with such an unsuitable person?”
“Well, not angry.”
“Were you upset with her for blowing her chance to go to college, coming home and getting herself pregnant by a man who wasn’t going to take care of her?”
He nodded hard. “You bet.”
“When you saw her last summer, in the parking lot, and thought she might be pregnant for the second time, you must have been doubly disappointed.”
“I thought she was just throwing her life away,” said Stephen. “But she lied to me about being pregnant. She said she wasn’t pregnant.”
“Did that make you angry?” asked Judith, and Naomi thought he would dismiss the idea, and quickly, but Stephen seemed to give it sober consideration.
“Yes,” he said quietly, and Naomi was taken aback. As if it had anything to do with him!
“I see,” Judith said. She walked to the front of her table and sat back against it. “Mr. Trask, Heather is an independent person, is she not?”
“Yes,” he said sadly, “I’d say she was.”
“Did she have supportive parents, for example?”
Stephen shook his head. “No parents. Heather’s mother left her at home with her grandmother. I don’t think the father was ever in the picture.”
“So Heather grew up alone with her grandmother?”
“That’s correct. Until Pick‘s—that is, Polly’s—death last year.”
“How old was Heather when that happened?”
“Oh …” he thought, “I’d say nineteen.”
“And since her grandmother’s death, since the age of nineteen, Heather has been completely on her own, no family of any kind?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Any friends that you knew of?”
“She came to work with another employee, Martina Graves, for a while. But no, not many friends. If any,” he amended.
“So basically we’re talking about a young woman with no family and very few friends, trying to bring up a daughter in virtual isolation?”
“Her life was very hard,” Stephen said. “I know it was.”
“In your opinion, was Heather a good mother to her daughter Polly?”
He glanced at Charter. “Well, I’ve heard some things I certainly disapprove of.”
“We’ve all heard things, Mr. Trask,” Judith cut him off, “but what I’m really interested in is what you actually observed.”
“She was a good mother.”
“She get much help from Ashley Deacon, the father of her child?”
“None I know of.”
“No financial support? No help around the house?”
Stephen looked down. “He was pretty uninvolved, as far as I’m aware.
“But he continued the affair, even after Polly’s birth, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, Mr. Trask, when—in your understanding—did the affair between my client and Mr. Deacon come to an end?”
He looked briefly at Heather. “That would have been last January. There was some kind of ruckus in the woods. I think they split up that night.”
“‘Some kind of ruckus,’” Judith considered. “Can you elaborate?”
“I can’t really. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say what happened.”
“All right. But you’re fairly certain that this ‘ruckus’ coincided with the end of the affair.”
“Yes.” Again, he looked at Heather. “I went to see her the next day. It was the day after her grandmother died. I went over to the house. She told me it was finished between her and Ashley.”
“Hm.” Judith got up and walked over to where Stephen sat. She planted one elbow on the ledge by his shoulder and turned, so that they, conspiratorial almost, could consider Heather together.
“How did she feel about the breakup? Was she relieved it was over?”
He looked at Judith as if she was crazy. “No. She was … she was in terrible shape. She knew he wouldn’t change his mind, but she was devastated.”
“Oh, so I infer, then, that the breakup was Ashley Deacon’s idea?”
“Very much so,” Stephen said.
“The man she had devoted herself to, in spite of the fact that he had used her for sex, gotten her pregnant, and refused to take any financial or personal responsibility for his child, just one day decided he’d had enough of her and dropped her?”
“That’s about it,” Stephen said cruelly. “What a prince, huh?”
“Objection!” Charter shouted. Judith suppressed a smile. Judge Hayes leaned over Stephen.
“You should just answer the question, Mr. Trask. No editorial comments, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Judith picked it up again right away. “And, as you said before, Heather didn’t have any family at all, and very few friends?”
“No.” He shook his head. To Naomi, he looked pained, as if this were all somehow his fault.
“And can you imagine how much worse this already terrible state of mind must have become when Heather discovered she was again pregnant?”
“She didn’t have to lie to me!” he thundered. “She could have told me the truth when I asked her. I thought I had a right to know!”
“And why,” Judith seemed taken aback, “did you think that?”
He looked surprised himself by what he had said. He eyed all three of them—Judith, Naomi, Heather, in turn—and then glared at Charter, who glared back. Then he apologized, though for what Naomi couldn’t quite work out, and Judith, as if in forgiveness, let him go.
Chapter 32
Some Kind of Paragon
ASHLEY’S TESTIMONY WOULD WOUND HEATHER, whatever it consisted of. Naomi did not know what Judith said to prepare her client the following morning, but she hoped keenly that whatever it was, it would not make the situation worse. Naomi had noted her friend’s disdain, her disapproval of Heather’s heartfelt subjugation, of Heather’s choices, even of Heather herself. Judith was not a soft person, that much was clear, though it did not deflect Naomi’s love for her. She could not condemn a brittleness that came from admirable, unenviable things she herself had not endured, like a mother’s wartime fortitude or a career of defending the indigent. Sometimes, she thought, finding her seat before the morning session began, Naomi felt herself a kind of human barrier between Heather’s fragility and Judith’s angry disbelief, loyal to both but never allowing herself to hope that there might at some point be a synergy, of understanding, of—oh, that elusive—sisterhood among the three of them, in spite of the fact that the world now viewed them in precisely this way: three witches over their cauldron, three crones busy at their blood-libel, their slaughter of innocents. She crossed her legs, the pantyhose grating her skin; this, the second of her three-pack, already had a string-bean-length run at the ankle. She had seen Ashley out in the hallway, absorbed in The Manchester Union Leader, the paper folded back on itself into a neat wedge. He was reading an article about himself.
Heather began to cry immediately when he was brought in, but discreetly, as if she did not want to burden anyone with her unha
ppiness. As he walked, he looked past the frantic stare of the mother of two of his children to Naomi, whom he smiled at warmly and nodded to, as if they were meeting in the supermarket or the parking lot at the mill. “Hello,” he even mouthed, with that benign sweetness in his eyes. She thought again of the window he had broken and then wordlessly repaired, and turned away.
Amiably, he walked to the witness seat, and lifted his hands, and said the words of the oath with a kind of breathless wonder. He turned and sat, crossing his legs. His hair was back, but his habitual bandanna had been replaced by a discreet rubber band, and he wore a tan corduroy jacket over a white shirt buttoned up nearly to the top. Charter was flipping the pages of his legal pad, but Ashley waited calmly, his eyes over their heads to some unknowable point at the back of the room.
When the D.A. straightened at last, Ashley related for them all the points of his life: childhood and college, marriage and work. He had helped build the sports center in Goddard, then remained on call to maintain the plant. He had married Sue Locke in 1980, when they graduated from the University of Vermont. Now they had two children. It sounded so utterly unobjectionable, Naomi marveled, and indeed, Ashley sat easily in the witness chair, without even showing the physical discomfort Naomi knew it engendered, as if he feared nothing at all, regretted nothing at all. For the first time in her life, she understood that charm was not necessarily a positive attribute.
“Can you recall for me,” said Charter, “the circumstances of your first meeting with Miss Heather Pratt.”
Ashley pursed his lips. “I was working at the sports center,” he said evenly. “This was, oh, I guess November of ’83. The place had only been going about half a year.”
“You were on staff at the sports center?”
“Well, on staff, no. But we had kind of an agreement. I mean, myself and Stephen Trask. He called me if there was anything to do, and there was always something to do. The builder on the job wasn’t very good, in my opinion.”
Charter spoke from his seat. “And did Mr. Trask introduce you to Heather Pratt?”
Ashley shook his head. “No. He never did. She came to me by herself.”
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