Anya stared into the man’s face, trying to read him. He lowered his head, avoiding her gaze, and scrawled over the word, obliterating it with black pen.
Anya remembered him scribbling over another word when she’d visited him before. Slowly, things were falling into place. She grabbed his hand to make him stop and felt the spasm in his fist.
Suddenly it made sense. The secrecy, the protective husband.
She locked eyes with the old man. “Did this man rape Therese that night?”
The silence answered her question. Her mother always said that the words people refused to speak said more about them than the ones they actually spoke.
Therese Brody had not been responsible for the pregnancy. The man her father had forced her to go out with had raped her on their one outing. As a result, she had been ostracized and left without support. Apart from a young man who loved her unconditionally.
William Brody was one of the most honorable men she had ever met.
The man who raped his wife had got away with it and continued to live without prosecution. Anya knew they could confirm his identity from the fetal DNA, but only if they knew who they were looking for.
“Why did you place the baby in the box, in your home?”
He hesitated, then turned back to the whiteboard.
Anya understood. If they’d gone to the hospital, a stillborn child would have been put into either a mass unmarked grave, or thrown out with hospital waste. It was as if the system wanted mothers to forget these children. And there wouldn’t have been counseling for the mother either.
She nodded. If Charlotte had not been baptized, the Church would have refused to bury her. So much for compassion and valuing life. It must have been so painful for Therese-having been raped, she was rejected by her family for shaming them with a premarital pregnancy, then delivered her daughter, whom she’d grown to love, stillborn. No wonder she kept the baby’s remains close by.
It was the only way for her to grieve and gain closure.
The man who loved her had kept the secret, until now.
William handed back the pen. The game and the discussion were finished.
But not for Anya. She had to know. Therese’s parents’ ambitious marriage plans for their daughter, the baby’s tumor behind the eye, William striking out the word “Judge” before. “Was the man who raped Therese Judge Philip Pascoe?”
William’s hand began to spasm, and he arched his neck in distress.
“I’m sorry. I guessed. Charlotte had a retinoblastoma and was so unlucky to have died that early. It’s a rare form of tumor, often inherited and associated with unusual cancers if sufferers are lucky enough to survive into adulthood.
“Pascoe lost an eye as a child and has had a rare form of bone cancer recently. It all adds up. His age fits, the ruthless ambition for the bench, his attitudes to women. Dan said you disliked each other from years ago.”
Anya wondered how she would explain it to Dan. Not only had his mother been raped, she had delivered a stillborn child conceived as a result. The man who raped Therese was still alive and had yet to answer for it. Money and power, William said.
Suddenly she realized she had nothing to explain. Dan had been standing in the doorway all along.
39
Anya chased Dan to his car, refusing to be left behind. She had to make him see reason before he did something foolish so she climbed in the passenger seat. Despite all her efforts he didn’t speak on the way. There could only be one place they were headed.
Outside the white 1920s Art-deco home, Anya grabbed Dan by the arm. “Think what you’re doing. If you launch in there and do something stupid, you’ll lose everything. He’ll make sure you never practice law again. You’ll be arrested. And for what?”
Dan pulled his arm free, left the car and strode up the pathway to the front door.
“Hurting him isn’t going to bring your mother back, or change what he did to her. Instead, it’ll just destroy your father.”
The lawyer stopped but didn’t turn around. “I need to face him and tell him that I know he raped Mum.”
Two more steps and he was on the doorstep, ringing the bell.
Anya caught up, short of breath, as a woman wearing dark glasses opened the door. “Can I help you?” she said.
“Mrs. Pascoe, my name is Brody. I work with your husband.”
“He’s in the study, please come in.”
She was dressed in a matching blue knit top and pencil skirt, and camel heels, but didn’t appear to be blind, despite the glasses. “I’ll get Philip, please make yourself comfortable.”
Dan paced the room, which overlooked the harbor. Glass from ceiling to floor highlighted one of the most expensive views in the city. Anya moved between him and the foyer, from where she assumed the judge would enter.
He appeared a few minutes later, wearing a business shirt and cardigan with suit pants.
“I don’t need to tell you, Brody, that this visit is totally inappropriate. I could report you to the Law Society and Bar Association for this. And your little doctor friend will be in trouble as well.”
“It has nothing to do with the trial, this is personal,” Dan announced. “It’s about you and my mother.”
Pascoe scoffed. “I barely knew the girl.”
“Then you wouldn’t object to a DNA test.”
The judge smiled. “You’re deluded if you think I’m your father. That’s just wishful thinking. For a while I thought you were different, but you’re a lot like your old man. He never had the guts to make it on his own. So he spent his life sheltering behind legal aid.”
Mrs. Pascoe returned with a tray of canapes and wineglasses and placed them on a side table. “There’s red and white wine or, if you prefer, spirits are in the cabinet.”
Dan seemed unperturbed by the comment about his father. “She had a baby, a little girl, in 1962. The child had a tumor at the back of the eye.”
“Philip, what’s he talking about?” The woman’s voice rose in pitch.
The judge remained standing, but by the way he swayed it was as though the bones in his one good leg were beginning to melt.
Anya explained, hoping to keep Brody calm in the process. “The child had a rare type of inherited tumor called a retinoblastoma.”
Mrs. Pascoe lowered herself into a chair.
“Philip had one as a child, it was a miracle he survived.” She leaned over and touched a faded color photo of a baby propped up against pillows. “Our Erin wasn’t so lucky. The first tumor was diagnosed at three months. Within two weeks there was one in her other eye. The day she turned four months we lost her.” She tugged on her skirt and smoothed it over her lap. “You don’t need to tell me how rare retinoblastomas are. Erin inherited the gene,” her tone turned from sad to bitter, “from her father.”
Pascoe responded, matter-of-fact. “Woman, stop carrying on. I was unaware of the inheritance until after you had the child.” Up close and without his glasses on, the artificial eye was more obvious. When he spoke, it lagged behind, out of sync with the left eye.
Anya turned to his wife. The dark glasses obviously didn’t obscure her vision, and her foundation was thicker
