Sing You Home

“I can sink her,” Pastor Clive whispers.

“I am surely glad you’re sitting, Your Honor, because for once we agree with everything Attorney Moretti said,” Wade begins.

Ben turns in his seat. “Seriously?”

Pastor Clive nods. Ben gets up and walks toward Wade, who’s still speaking. “We are of the opinion, in fact, that it would be preferable to have the embryos go to a lesbian couple than it would be to send them to the incinerator-” He breaks off as Ben leans over and murmurs into his ear. “Your Honor?” Wade asks. “Might we have a recess?”

“What the hell?” Angela Moretti says.

“My co-counsel informs me that some new evidence has come to light, evidence that might affect Your Honor’s decision in this matter.”

The judge looks at him, and then at Angela. “Fifteen minutes,” he pronounces.

The courtroom empties. Wade pulls Angela Moretti aside and speaks quietly with her; a moment later she gathers Zoe and ushers her out of the courtroom. “We couldn’t have asked for a better Hail Mary moment if we’d designed it ourselves,” Wade says, coming back toward me.

“What’s going on?”

“Your ex-wife is about to be charged with sexually harassing a student,” he says. “Or in other words, you can go out and buy a stroller or a bassinet. No judge is going to give a baby to someone who sexually abused a kid. As far as I’m concerned, you just won this case.”

But I keep hearing the first part of his statement. “Zoe would never do that. It can’t be true.”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s true,” Ben says. “It just matters that the judge hears it.”

“But this doesn’t feel right. Zoe could lose her job-”

Wade waves away my concern, batting at my words like they’re mosquitoes. “Max, boy,” he says. “Eyes on the prize.”

17 ZOE

“Please tell me you’ve never heard of a girl named Lucy DuBois,” Angela says.

Immediately, I picture Lucy, with her long red hair, her chewed fingernails, the ladder-back scars of her arms. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know.” Angela’s voice sounds too tight, like a spring. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Vanessa pulls up a chair and sits down next to me. We are back in the conference room from the other day, but it is raining. The world outside the window looks ripe and lush, the grass so green it hurts to look at it. “She’s a student who suffers from severe depression,” Vanessa explains to Angela, and then she touches my arm. “Didn’t you say she was upset two days ago?”

“She was talking about killing herself. Oh, my God, she didn’t do it, did she?”

Angela shakes her head. “Her parents have accused you of sexual assault, Zoe.”

I blink, certain I haven’t heard correctly. “What?”

“They say you came on to her on two separate occasions.”

“That’s absolutely ridiculous! Our relationship is completely professional!” I turn to Vanessa. “Tell her.”

“She’s a seriously disturbed girl,” Vanessa says. “Surely whatever Lucy’s said would have to be taken with a grain of salt the size of a salt lick.”

“Which is why it’s particularly damaging that someone named Grace Belliveau has apparently signed a statement indicating she saw Zoe and the girl in a compromising position.”

My bones feel like they are floating loose inside me. “Who the hell is Grace Belliveau?”

“She teaches math,” Vanessa says. “I doubt you’ve ever even met her.”

I have a brief and vivid flash of a teacher with short black hair, poking her head into the room at the end of a particularly emotional session with Lucy. My hand on Lucy’s back, rubbing slow circles.

But she had been sobbing, I want to say.

It’s not what you think.

I had played Barney’s theme song on the ukulele. I’d told Lucy that I knew the truth, that she was shutting me out so that I couldn’t shut her out. I’d told her I wouldn’t leave her. Ever.

“The girl alleges,” Angela says, “that you told her you’re gay.”

“Give me a break.” Vanessa shakes her head. “After all this media coverage, who doesn’t know? Whatever this is, whatever he’s got on Zoe-it’s all fabricated.”

“I did tell her I was gay,” I confess. “The last time I saw her. It’s the last thing you’re ever supposed to do as a music therapist-bring yourself into the therapy-but she was so upset over what Pastor Clive was saying about homosexuality. She was talking about suicide again, and… I don’t know. I just had the sense that maybe she was questioning her own sexuality, and that it wasn’t something her family would really be supportive about. That maybe it would help her to realize that someone she respected-someone like me-could be a good person and still be a lesbian. I wanted to give her something to hang her hat on, you know, instead of the sermons she probably hears at church.”

“She goes to Clive Lincoln’s church?” Angela asks.

“Yes,” Vanessa says.

“Well. That solves the mystery of how Pastor Clive got this scoop.”

“So the accusation isn’t public yet?” Vanessa asks.

“No,” Angela says. “And surprise, surprise. Wade says that he might be able to persuade the family to keep it private. Someone in Lucy’s family must have gone to the pastor for counseling. Maybe even brought Lucy there herself.”

It’s not a boy, Lucy had said.

It was a girl.

Could it have been me? Had her attachment to me gone further than friendship? Could she have said something, sung something, written something that was misinterpreted by her parents?

Or had Lucy done nothing at all, except finally gotten the courage to come out… only to have her parents twist it into a lie that was easier for them to accept?

“What’s the mother like?” Angela asks.

Vanessa glances up. “Meek. Does what her husband says. I’ve never met him.”

“Has Lucy got siblings?”

“Three younger ones coming up through the middle school,” Vanessa says. “It’s a second marriage, from what I understand. Lucy’s biological father died when she was a baby.”

I turn to her. “You believe me, don’t you? You know I’d never do what she’s saying I did?”

“I believe you,” Angela says. “Maybe even the judge will believe you. But by that time, Zoe, you’ll have been dragged through the coals in a courtroom. The allegation will be all over the newspapers. And even if the case comes out in our favor, the fact that you were accused might be what sticks in everyone’s minds.”

I get up from my seat. “I need to talk to Lucy. If I could just-”

“I don’t want you anywhere near her,” Angela yells. “Do you know what a field day Wade will have with that?”

Stunned into silence, I fall back into my chair.

“You have a lot to think about, Zoe,” she says. “Because you might get these embryos-but it could cost you your career.”

Angela requests a day to digest the new information before the trial resumes. My mother and Vanessa and I sneak down to the parking lot via the custodian’s elevator again, but this time, instead of feeling like we’ve outsmarted the other side, it only feels like we’re hiding.

“Take a walk with me,” my mother says, as soon as we are outside.