Chapter 7 - Blood on the Courtroom Floor
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Pain exploded through me so violently that for a moment I could not understand where my body ended and the courtroom began. The impact landed low and hard against the side of my abdomen. My chair tipped. Elise shouted. Someone screamed from the gallery. I hit the floor with one hand still locked around my stomach, the other reaching for a table leg that was no longer there. My vision went white, then black at the edges. The baby moved once, sharply, then everything inside me seemed to seize.
Beatrice stood over me, breathing hard, her face flushed with triumph and madness.
“See?” she shouted. “If it were real, she would—”
Then she saw the blood.
It spread slowly at first, bright against the polished courtroom floor, then faster beneath the hem of my dress. The sound that left the room was not a whisper or a gasp. It was horror.
My father roared my name.
“Nora!”
I had never heard him sound like that. Not in anger, not in grief, not even the night I left home. The bench chair crashed back. He did not use the steps. He moved with the force of a man twenty years younger, coming down from the bench, over the low barrier, past the stunned clerk and bailiff. His robe flared behind him. He reached Beatrice before she could move again and shoved her away with such fury that the bailiff had to catch her before she fell.
Then my father was on his knees beside me.
“Call an ambulance!” he shouted. “Now!”
The room blurred around his face. Silver hair. Dark eyes. Tears. My father’s hands shook as he pressed his robe against the blood, then stopped, afraid to hurt me more.
“Nora, look at me. Stay with me.”
I tried to breathe. It came out as a broken sound.
“Dad?” I whispered.
His face crumpled.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
Beatrice stared at us from the bailiff’s grip, disbelief cutting through her rage.
“Dad?” she repeated. “He is your father?”
My father turned his head slowly. The look he gave her was not judicial. It was not measured. It was the look of a man who had just seen someone try to kill his grandchild.
“I am recusing myself from this case effective immediately,” he said, voice low and terrifying. “But right now, I am not speaking as the court.”
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He rose halfway, still keeping one hand near me as though afraid I might disappear.
“I am the grandfather of the child you just tried to murder.”
