THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 91

Carver paused for a moment.

Then he sat down.

Patricia stood for a brief redirect.

She asked only one question.

"Dr Chen," she said. "In your twenty years of medical practice before and after this case, have you ever seen the compound you identified in Sarah Blackwell's blood occurring naturally in any patient?"

"No," Dr Chen said. "Never."

"Thank you," Patricia said. "No further questions."

Dr Chen stepped down from the stand.

She walked past the defence table.

Victoria did not look at her.

Dr Chen did not look at Victoria either.

She walked to the exit and was gone.

I watched her go.

I thought about her sitting across from me in a dark park handing me an envelope. About the guilt she had been carrying for twenty years. About the decision she had made as a young frightened doctor that had cost my mother everything and had cost Dr Chen her peace of mind for two decades.

She had come. She had told the truth. Whatever else was true about her that was also true and I had not forgotten it.

Judge Adeyemi adjourned for lunch at one o'clock.

We went to a quiet room that Patricia had arranged near the courthouse. Henry. Patricia. Yemi. Me.

Mrs Park had sent food. She had packed it herself that morning before we left. Sandwiches and fruit and small containers of things she had made. I had not asked her to do it. She had just done it the way she always did things that needed doing.

We ate mostly in silence.

Patricia went through her notes. Henry made quiet observations about the morning. Yemi sat beside me and ate her sandwich and did not try to fill the silence with words it did not need.

After a while I said “She was extraordinary.”

Patricia looked up.

"Dr Chen," I said. "She was extraordinary."

Patricia nodded. "She was exactly what she needed to be," she said. "The jury believed her. I could see it."

"Carver tried hard," Henry said.

"He did," Patricia agreed. "But there is a quality about a person who has been carrying guilt for twenty years and has finally decided to speak. It is recognisable. Juries understand it."

I thought about that.

I thought about what it cost Dr Chen to sit in that chair and say the things she said in front of a room full of people and directly across from the woman who had threatened her.

It had cost her something real.

And she had done it anyway.

After lunch the afternoon session was procedural. Documents entered into evidence. The competency assessment from the hospital. Richard's journal extracts. The chain of custody documentation for the medical records.

Not dramatic. But necessary. The careful building of the foundation on which everything else would rest.

I sat in the gallery and watched and listened and felt the day moving forward the way it needed to move.

We left the courthouse at four thirty.

The press were still outside but fewer of them than in the morning. Brandon's team managed the exit as smoothly as the entrance. We got to the car without incident.

In the car Henry said nothing for the first few minutes.

Then he said: "Tomorrow Marcus takes the stand."

"I know," I said.

"Are you prepared for that?"

I looked out the window at the city going past.

Marcus on the stand meant Marcus in a courtroom saying out loud the things he had said to me in the hotel restaurant. It meant his voice in the public record. It meant the jury hearing from the man who had been present and had chosen not to look and had let my mother's life be destroyed because looking would have required him to act.

"Yes," I said. "I am prepared."

Henry nodded and said nothing more.

Lily was in the kitchen when I got home.

Not drawing this time. She was sitting at the kitchen counter watching Mrs Park cook with the focused supervision she always applied to cooking she was interested in. Mrs Park was making stir fry which was my favourite and Lily's second favourite and Lily knew it was my favourite which meant she had probably asked for it specifically.

She looked at me when I came in.

"How was today?" she asked.

"Hard," I said. "But good."

"Is the doctor lady okay?" she asked. She had known Dr Chen was testifying today. I had told her in simple terms the night before.

"She was very brave," I said.

Lily nodded seriously.

"Brave people deserve stir fry," she said.

Mrs Park made a sound that might have been a laugh.

"Go sit down," Mrs Park told me. "Both of you. It is almost ready."

Lily jumped off the counter and pulled me toward the table by the sleeve.

We sat down together.

"Lily," I said.

"Yes."

"Thank you for asking Mrs Park to make stir fry."

She looked at me with enormous innocence.

"I did not ask her to make stir fry," she said.

I looked at Mrs Park.

Mrs Park said nothing and stirred the pan.

"Right," I said.

Lily picked up her fork.

"I might have mentioned that you had a hard day," she said carefully. "And that stir fry is your comfort food. That is all."

"That is exactly asking her to make stir fry," I said.

"No," she said. "Asking would have been saying can you please make stir fry. What I did was more subtle."

I looked at her.

She looked at me with those serious emerald eyes.

"You are six years old," I said.

"Yes," she agreed. "And I am very advanced for my age."

Mrs Park brought the food to the table.

Henry appeared from the study doorway. He looked at the stir fry. Then he looked at Lily. Then he sat down without comment.

We ate dinner and it was warm and easy the way dinner had become warm and easy in this house over the past months.

Lily talked about school. About Mia and a project they were planning and something Jasper had done again with a pencil that apparently required full reporting. Henry listened and asked one precise question at exactly the right moment which made Lily feel properly heard which was always the goal.

Mrs Park sat with us again which she had started doing more of lately. She ate quietly and smiled at things Lily said.

After dinner Lily helped clear the table without being asked which was something she had started doing recently and which I had not commented on because commenting on it might make her self conscious about it.

She was becoming more herself every day.

Not the careful contained version of herself that I had seen in the first weeks. Not the child who checked I was in the room before she fell asleep. The actual full version. The one who had opinions about everything and drew butterflies and argued about the correct shade of purple and tied ribbons on people's wrists before important days.