Chapter 227
Chapter 226. The Hearing Morning
SEDONA
On December 23rd. I was awake before the alarm. I lay in the dark for a moment doing the accounting. That was what Dr. Mitchell had taught me. Take the inventory before the day begins. I was calm and breathing evenly. We were in the Lincoln Park house instead of Seattle. I looked outside, and the weather was grey, which is usual in Chicago on a December morning.
I got up as I quickly freshened up before going downstairs to join the rest. The house was already up and running, doing various things that needed to be done without being told. My mother made breakfast. The full version, the kind that required multiple pots, as everyone sat down and had complete meal.. Nobody spoke much, This was fine. Everyone was getting ready for what today meant in their own way.
My father came to find me at eight-fifteen. He had the book. The one we’d been working through in the Seattle sitting room, when I was still undergoing treatment and needed him to stay with me.
He had brought it to Chicago without mentioning it. He sat beside me on the sofa in the front room and opened it to where we’d stopped and read one paragraph as a comfort for me.
“You are stronger than you look, I know today has you stressed about what will happen but I need you to know this, it will all work out. You existed before today, and you will exist after it. This is not the end of anything.
“Thank you,” I said,
He nodded and set the book on the cushion between us, and that was the whole of it.
The dress was dark green. Adaeze had been specific:/professional, not severe, nothing that read as apology or trying to appear submissive to Logan. The color of someone who had come to be heard, not forgiven. My hair was pulled back and tied in a bun with clean lines.
I looked at myself in the mirror for approximately ten seconds. I looked like a Preston. That was the point. Cameron was in the hallway when I came down. He looked at me, taking my appearance as he nodded his approval. He said nothing. He handed me my coat.
Lucian was staying with the children. Rachel and Enzo, who had arrived two days ago and slotted into the house with the ease of people who understood what a family needed in a difficult week. And they fitted in perfectly with worries. Lake had announced at breakfast that he intended to be very quiet and very well-behaved for the entire day. He had also specified his contribution to the hearing. Drew had received this with appropriate gravity, nodding once, as if Lake had made a formal pledge.
I had kissed both of them before I came downstairs. Lake had allowed it, and Drew had patted my hand.
Cameron drove my parents were in the back. I watched the city through the passenger window. The Chicago I had known for eight years had not changed much. I had the proper grid for it. I had walked these streets as Sedona Hayes. I was in them now as Sedona Preston, and the city looked the same, and I was entirely different inside it.
Nobody spoke much on the drive. I guess it was the proper thing; at least we shouldn’t distract Cameron
1/3
The Hearing
while driving.
Claim
Cook County Circuit Court was grey stone and had the weight of a building that had seen everything and was not moved by any of it.
We were early. Adaeze was on the steps, dark coat, the document case she carried like it was part of her, the expression of someone who had already been inside and assessed the terrain. She looked at me when we came up the steps. One look, professional and warm underneath the professional.
“Ready p>
“Yes p>
We went inside. The lobby was high-ceilinged, December cold still on my coat. Adaeze was walking me through the final order of proceedings, her voice low and even. I was listening to what she was saying whilst still marking the windows and doors of this place.
That was how I saw him.
Across the lobby. Thirty feet, maybe more. Logan Hayes, in a dark suit with his lawyer beside him, the same contained certainty he carried everywhere.
He looked the same.
This surprised me. I had not known what I expected entirely but I had expected the months to show somehow. The stalking complaint, the operative, the courtroom he had not chosen and could not control. I had expected some evidence of it on him.
There was none. He was Logan Hayes in a courtroom, the way he was Logan Hayes anywhere. He saw me for three seconds. I did not take my eyes off.
Logan looked at me, trying to find the version of me that he was used to, the one who had flinched when he grabbed her arm. He was looking for her.
She wasn’t there.
I turned to Adaeze.
“Let’s go in,” I said.
We walked into the courtroom.
Behind me, my parents followed. My father’s footstep, the measured one, the one that meant he had taken the full measure of something and was not impressed by it but was also not letting it known because there was a a time and place for it and it wasn’t here, before a courtroom where anything would be used against us. My mother Jennifer was beside him, her coat on her hands as she held on tight to it, using into steady herself.. Cameron was at the rear.
All of us walked in, and the door closed behind us. The room smelled like paper and institutional heating. That was the kind of air that gathered in places where things got decided. There were Wood panels, fluorescent light, and a near-empty gallery. That day was a Tuesday in December. The holiday docket is thin; nobody here who didn’t need to be.
I sat beside Adaeze and put my hands flat on the table in front of me.
2/3
They were steady. Somments LUCK DRAW > Vote 545 Florence A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.