Grant finally looked at his son. For the first time all morning.
Judge Halloway took off her reading glasses.
“Young man,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Nolan Bellamy,” he said. “I’m eight.”
“Nolan,” the judge said gently. “Usually children don’t speak in this courtroom. Usually I talk to them privately, in my office, if I need to hear from them.”
Nolan nodded.
“I know,” he said. “But that picture is about me. And it’s not true. So I want to say what’s true.”
Mr. Carroway stood up quickly.
“Your Honor,” he said, “I’d object. The child is clearly under emotional strain. Anything he says here will reflect his mother’s influence.”
Judge Halloway held up one hand without looking at him.
“Mr. Carroway,” she said. “I’ll decide what reflects what.”
She turned back to Nolan.
“Go ahead, Nolan,” she said. “But stay right there next to your mom. And if you want to stop, you can stop anytime. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nolan said.
He looked up at the poster board. At the photograph of himself walking out of school.
“That picture is from Monday,” he said. “After I came back from Dad’s house.”
The courtroom was so quiet I could hear the radiator hissing by the window.
“These stains,” Nolan said, and he pointed to the front of his shirt. “They’re not from Mom’s house. They’re from Dad’s house.”
I stopped breathing.
Across the aisle, Grant’s smile slipped.
“I wore it to Dad’s on Friday,” Nolan said. “Because it’s my lucky shirt. On Saturday night, his girlfriend Tessa made spaghetti. I spilled sauce on it. And chocolate milk. I asked if we could wash it.”
He looked at his father.
“Dad said no,” he said. “He said, Leave it. Don’t wash it. Send him back like that on Monday.”
The air in the room changed.
I turned and looked at Grant. His face had gone completely still. His hand had stopped halfway to his water glass.
“Then he said something else,” Nolan said. “On the phone. To a man named Jerry.”
Mr. Carroway was on his feet again.
“Your Honor,” he said sharply. “This is hearsay from a child who is clearly confused. I’d ask that—”
“Sit down, Mr. Carroway,” Judge Halloway said.
She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.
He sat down.
“What did your dad say, Nolan?” the judge asked.
Nolan opened his hand.
In his palm was a tiny black memory card. The kind that goes inside a tablet or a camera. Smaller than a postage stamp.
“I don’t remember all of it,” Nolan said. “But I don’t have to. Because I recorded it.”
Part Six: The Memory Card
I stared at my son’s hand.
I had never seen that memory card before in my life. I had no idea where it came from. I had no idea what was on it.
Judge Halloway leaned forward.
“Nolan,” she said carefully. “What is that?”
“It’s from my tablet,” Nolan said. “The old one Dad gave me for Christmas. Before he left. It has a camera.”
He looked up at me. For a second, he looked scared again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Mom,” he said. “I wanted to be sure first.”
I couldn’t say anything. My throat had closed.
“I was making a dinosaur movie,” Nolan told the judge. “On Saturday night. At Dad’s house. In his office. I had my T-rex and my stegosaurus on his desk, and I was doing a battle scene. With sound effects.”
He looked a little embarrassed.
“Dad came in and got on the phone,” he said. “He didn’t see that my tablet was recording. It was behind the lamp. He talked for a long time.”
He held up the tiny card.
“I heard him say Mom’s name,” Nolan said. “And I heard him say my shirt. And I heard him say the bad thing about her job. And about Mr. Pruitt. So I didn’t stop recording.”
His voice wobbled.
“After, I watched it in the bathroom with the door locked,” he said. “And I got really scared. Because he said mean things about Mom. Things that weren’t true. And he said things about me too.”
He looked at the judge.
“Grandma said the secret pocket is for important things,” he said. “So I took the little card out of my tablet and I put it in there. Behind the moon. So nobody could take it.”
He held it out toward the judge.
“I think this is important,” he said.
Judge Halloway looked at the memory card for a long moment.
Then she looked at Grant.
Grant was sitting perfectly still. His face had gone the color of old paper. His fancy watch caught the light as his hand trembled on the table.
“Mr. Bellamy,” the judge said quietly. “Is there anything you’d like to say before I look at this?”
Grant opened his mouth. Then he closed it.
Mr. Carroway leaned over and whispered something urgently in his ear. Grant shook his head. Then he looked at his son.
“Nolan,” he said. His voice cracked. “Buddy, you shouldn’t—that was private. You shouldn’t record people without asking.”
Nolan looked back at his father.
“You didn’t ask me,” he said, “before you used my picture.”
Nobody in that courtroom moved.
Judge Halloway nodded to the bailiff. He walked over slowly and held out his hand. Nolan carefully placed the tiny card in his palm, like he was handing over a baby bird.
“Thank you, Nolan,” the judge said. “That was very brave. You can sit down now, next to your mom.”
Nolan climbed back into his chair. He was shaking.
I put my arm around him and held on.
“We’ll take a thirty-minute recess,” Judge Halloway said. “Counsel and both parties, I’ll want to see you in chambers. We’ll review this together.”
She looked at Nolan one more time.
“And somebody,” she said, “get this young man a cup of hot chocolate.”
Part Seven: In Chambers
The judge’s chambers were small and warm, with bookshelves to the ceiling and a framed photograph of two golden retrievers on the desk.
Grant sat in a chair by the window. Mr. Carroway sat beside him with his briefcase on his lap. I sat across from them with my folder. A court officer set up a laptop on the corner of the judge’s desk.
Nolan stayed in the hallway with a court-appointed guardian, a kind woman named Mrs. Delgado, who had brought him hot chocolate and a coloring book about national parks.
The officer put the memory card into the laptop.
There were dozens of short videos on it. Dinosaur battles. A video of a squirrel outside Grant’s window. A video of Nolan explaining the planets to his stuffed rabbit.
Then a long one. Twenty-three minutes. Dated the previous Saturday at 8:14 p.m.
The judge clicked play.
At first, all you could see was a plastic T-rex standing on a wooden desk. Nolan’s voice made roaring sounds from off camera. Then a stegosaurus came into the frame, and there was a battle, with a lot of very serious sound effects.
Then you heard a door open.
Then Grant’s voice.
“Hey, Jerry. Yeah, it’s me.”
The camera was behind a desk lamp. You could see part of Grant’s shoulder and the back of his head as he sat down in his office chair. He clearly didn’t notice the tablet. He was facing the window.
“Yeah, I got your message,” Grant said. “Monday’s perfect. He goes back to her Monday morning. I’ll make sure he’s wearing that shirt.”
There was a pause while the other person talked.
“No, no, I’m not washing it,” Grant said. He laughed. “That’s the whole point. Tessa spilled spaghetti all over it tonight. It looks great. Get the shot when he comes out of school. Close up. Make it look bad.”
On the laptop, a small hand appeared at the edge of the frame, holding the T-rex very still.
“And hey,” Grant said. “Carroway’s going to want the stuff about the cleaning job. Did Clay write it up the way I told him?”
Another pause.
“Good,” Grant said. “Desk stuff. Missing items. Whatever. Doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be on paper. She can’t afford a lawyer. Nobody’s going to check.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
Grant, sitting by the window, closed his eyes.
On the screen, his voice kept going.
“And the landlord’s all set,” he said. “Pruitt took the five hundred. He wrote the letter. Unsanitary. Not appropriate for a minor. Her mother irons dish towels, Jerry, it’s ridiculous. But it’ll look good in a binder.”
He laughed again.
“Two more weeks,” he said. “Then I get the kid, I don’t pay a dime in support, and she can go back to waiting tables. Win-win.”
