Chapter 8
The hearing was held in a family court room in Newark, on the fourth floor, in a room with no windows and a clock that ran four minutes fast.
Vincent wore a dark suit and a tie Catherine had given him.
Diane sat on the other side of the aisle with her lawyer, a thin woman in glasses who looked like she had never lost anything in her life.
Ms. Reyes sat at the end of the bench with her report in a blue folder.
Emily sat behind Vincent in a gray dress she had borrowed from Denise, her hands folded in her lap, her back very straight.
Luca was not in the room. A child advocate had taken him to a playroom down the hall with a bag of toys and a social worker who had been instructed to keep him there until the judge asked for him.
Judge Amara Okafor was sixty and tired and precise. She read the file for a long time before she looked up.
“We have a petition for guardianship filed by the maternal grandmother,” she said. “We have a guardian ad litem’s report recommending a ninety-day placement.
We have an affidavit from a tutor alleging that the father has refused recommended treatment.” She looked at Vincent. “Mr. Romano, do you deny the allegation?”
“I deny that I refused treatment. I refused one kind of treatment. Residential care.
They wanted to take him to a facility in Pennsylvania where he would live for six months with strangers.
He had just lost his mother. I wasn’t going to lose him to a facility too.”
“You were told it might help.”
“I was told it might help. I was also told he wasn’t in danger. He wasn’t hurting himself.
He wasn’t sick. He was grieving.”
Vincent’s voice stayed level, but his hands had closed into fists under the table.
“I made a decision.
Maybe it was the wrong one.
But I made it as his father, not as a man trying to avoid inconvenience.”
Diane’s lawyer rose.
Her name was Ms. Pruitt, and she was very good.
“Mr. Romano, how often were you home in the six months after your wife’s death?”
“Objection,” Howard said.
“Overruled.”
“I don’t know the exact number.”
“Would it be fair to say fewer than ten nights a month?”
Vincent was silent.
“Would it be fair to say that your son was primarily raised by household staff?”
“He was cared for by people who love him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Objection,” Howard said again. “Counsel is badgering.”
“Sustained,” the judge said. “Move on, Ms. Pruitt.”
Pruitt did not move on. She walked to the evidence table and picked up a photograph—the east gate, the camera footage of a small figure slipping through in the rain.
“On the night of November twelfth, your son left your property alone.
He walked nearly two miles in a storm.
He was found in a diner by an employee who had no legal obligation to him.” She set the photograph down. “How did a six-year-old get past your security, Mr. Romano?”
“Because he was determined,” Vincent said. “And because the gate opened from the inside.”
“Because no one was watching him.”
“Because I was in a study feeling sorry for myself.” The words came out before he could stop them. “You want the truth? That’s the truth. I was twenty feet away, behind a door, talking to my lawyer about how to keep him. And he was walking out into the rain to find the only person who had ever made him feel like he wasn’t a problem to be solved.”
The room was quiet.
“That’s not a defense,” Vincent said. “I know it isn’t. But it is what happened.”
Ms. Pruitt let the silence sit, then turned to the bench. “Your Honor, the State’s position is that this child needs stability, not a man who learns his lesson in a courtroom.”
“The State doesn’t have a position,” Judge Okafor said mildly. “The State has a department. You represent Mrs. Whitfield. Sit down.”
Pruitt sat.
Howard called Emily next. She walked to the witness box like someone crossing ice.
“Ms. Harlow, how do you know the child?”
“He comes into the diner where I work. Tuesdays and Fridays. He’s been coming for about two months.”
“In your time with him, have you observed any change?”
“Yes.”
“Describe it.”
Emily took a breath. “When he first came in, he wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t look at anything except the window. He didn’t point, he didn’t nod. His father ordered for him every time.” She paused. “Now he points at the menu. He nods. He looks at me when I talk to him. He colored a picture and let me hang it on the wall. He—” Her voice caught, and she steadied it. “He reached out and held a napkin up to me when I spilled a drink on myself. Nobody asked him to. He just did it.”
“Would you say he’s thriving?”
“I’m a waitress,” Emily said. “I don’t know what thriving means in a courtroom. But I know he’s not the same boy who walked in that first day. And I know he’s not finished yet.”
Ms. Pruitt cross-examined for ten minutes and got nothing. Then Ms. Reyes stood.
“Your Honor, before I present my report, I’d like to ask Mr. Romano one question that isn’t in the file.”
The judge nodded.
Ms. Reyes turned. “Who is Salvatore Romano?”
Vincent did not look at Howard. He did not look at Emily. He looked at the judge.
“My uncle,” he said. “He raised me after my father died. He put me through school. He gave me my first job and my first loan.
He is also the reason I have a security detail and a gate that opens from the inside.” He paused. “He is not a good man.
Some of what he does is illegal.
I have known that for a long time, and I have told myself that I kept my distance, that I ran a legitimate business and stayed out of his.
That was a lie I told myself so I could keep the money and the protection and the name.”
“And now?”
Vincent reached into his jacket and took out a folded document. He set it on the table in front of the judge.
“That’s my resignation from the holding company and the transfer of my shares into a trust for my son, managed by an independent trustee.
As of this morning, I no longer have any interest in Romano Holdings.
I’ve also signed a lease on a house in Montclair, four blocks from Mrs. Whitfield. Three bedrooms. No gate. No cameras.”
Diane’s head came up.
“I’m not asking the court to keep him from his grandmother,” Vincent said. “I’m asking the court to let him have both of us. She was right. He needs a life, not a shrine.”
Judge Okafor looked at the document for a long moment.
“Mr. Romano,” she said. “Do you understand that if this is a performance, it will be the last one you give in this courtroom?”
“Yes.”
“And if your uncle objects?”
“He can object.” Vincent’s voice was quiet. “He’s not his father. And I’m not a boy anymore.”
The judge took off her glasses. “I’d like to speak with Luca now.”
They brought him in through the side door. He was wearing the green sweater. He held the social worker’s hand, and when he saw the room—the bench, the flags, the rows of adults—he stopped walking.
Emily turned in her seat. She did not wave. She just looked at him and nodded, the way she had the first day, as if to say, I see you.
Luca walked to the judge’s bench.
Judge Okafor came around it and knelt down, which surprised everyone in the room.
“Hello, Luca.
My name is Amara.
I’m going to ask you a few questions, and you can answer however you like.
You can nod, or shake your head, or point, or say nothing at all.
Do you understand?”
Luca nodded.
“Do you know why we’re here today?”
Another nod.
“Can you tell me what you want?”
Luca looked at his father. Then at his grandmother. Then at Emily.
He raised his hand and pointed at the door—the door they had brought him through, the door that led back to the hallway, the playroom, the toys, the world outside.
Then he pointed at all of them, one by one, and made a small circling gesture with his finger.
Diane made a sound and pressed her hand to her mouth.
“He wants all of us,” Vincent said hoarsely. “He’s saying he wants all of us.”
Judge Okafor rose. She looked at the clock, then at the room.
“I’m going to take a recess,” she said. “I’ll rule at two o’clock.”
At 1:52, in the hallway outside the courtroom, Salvatore Romano stepped off the elevator.
He was seventy-one years old, silver-haired, immaculate in a charcoal coat, and he walked with a cane he did not need. Two men came with him and stopped at the end of the corridor.
“Vincent,” he said pleasantly. “You should have told me we were having a family day.”
Vincent stepped in front of Emily and Diane.
“You’re not a party to this.”
“I am now.” Salvatore smiled. “I filed a motion twenty minutes ago.
I’m asking the court to consider that the boy’s father has just divested himself of every asset that could provide for him.” He looked past Vincent at Diane.
“You want him raised in Montclair on a waitress’s salary and a trust that I can freeze by Friday? Think carefully, Mrs. Whitfield.”
The courtroom door opened behind them. The clerk leaned out.
“The judge is ready.”
May you like
Salvatore’s cane clicked once against the tile.
“After you,” he said.
