Chapter 9
The courtroom had changed in the twenty minutes they spent in the hallway.
Someone had opened the blinds, and the flat November light fell across the benches, and the clock that ran four minutes fast now read 1:58.
Salvatore took a seat in the back row.
He did not sit with Diane.
He did not sit with Vincent.
He sat alone, both hands folded over the head of his cane, and watched the room the way a man watches a chessboard he has already won.
Ms. Pruitt rose first. “Your Honor, I’ve received Mr. Salvatore Romano’s motion.
He alleges that my client’s transfer of assets is a fraudulent conveyance designed to shield holdings from creditors, and that the trust is neither funded nor irrevocable.”
“It’s funded,” Howard said, standing. “And it’s irrevocable.
I filed the executed instrument this morning.
The trustee is First Meridian, an independent bank with no relationship to the Romano family.”
“Then why,” Salvatore said from the back, without standing, “is my name still on the deed to the house?”
Judge Okafor looked at him. “You’ll speak when you’re recognized, Mr. Romano.”
Salvatore inclined his head. He did not apologize.
“Mr. Klein,” the judge said, “is the house in the trust?”
“The house is not in the trust. It’s an asset of the holding company, which Mr. Vincent Romano has resigned from.”
“So the child’s home is controlled by a company his father no longer runs.”
“For thirty days. The lease in Montclair begins December first.”
“And in the meantime?”
Vincent stood. “In the meantime, my uncle can evict me from a house I paid for. That’s what he’s telling this court. He’s telling you he can make my son homeless by Friday.”
“That’s not what I said,” Salvatore murmured.
“It’s what you meant.”
The judge raised one hand. “Sit down. Both of you.”
They sat.
She read for a long time. Her pen moved once, twice. Then she took off her glasses and set them on the file.
“I’ve been a family court judge for nineteen years,” she said. “I have watched a great many people come into this room and tell me they have changed. Most of them are lying. Some are not.” She looked at Vincent. “I don’t know which you are yet. But I know this. A child who runs two miles through a storm to find a waitress is not a child who is being neglected. He is a child who has found, somewhere, a place where he is seen.” She paused. “That is not nothing. That is the whole thing.”
She turned to Diane. “Mrs. Whitfield, you filed this petition out of love, and I will not pretend otherwise. But the report before me does not support removal. It supports supervision.”
Then, to the room: “I’m ordering a twelve-month plan of joint legal custody. Luca resides primarily with his father, first at the Montclair address, with Mrs. Whitfield having parenting time every weekend and Wednesday evenings. The guardian ad litem will visit monthly for a year and report to this court. Mr. Romano will continue therapy for the child, and he will attend family therapy himself. Not the child alone, Mr. Romano. You.” She let that sit. “And if there is interference from any third party—” her eyes moved, unhurried, to the back row “—I will hear about it. I will not be gentle.”
Salvatore rose. The cane clicked once against the tile. “Your Honor.”
“You’re not recognized.”
“I’m leaving.” He smiled at the room—at Diane, at Emily, at last at Vincent. “It seems I’ve been overruled by a woman of great good sense. I only came to see that my nephew was being looked after.” He buttoned his coat. “He is. How fortunate.”
He walked out. The two men at the end of the corridor fell in behind him without a word.
The clerk called the next case. The room began to empty.
Outside, under the courthouse portico, Diane stood with her arms folded and her eyes on the gray sky. Rain came down in sheets, rattling the awning.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “He just left.”
“He doesn’t lose in courtrooms,” Vincent said. “He loses in parking lots.”
Diane looked at him sharply. “Is that a joke?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She was quiet. Then she said, “Wednesdays and weekends.”
“Wednesdays and weekends.”
“I’m going to spoil him rotten.”
“I know.”
She laughed—a short, wet, startled laugh—and then she was crying, and she hugged him, and Vincent stood very still in her arms with his eyes closed. It was the first time anyone in his family had touched him in two years without wanting something.
Emily came down the steps behind them. Her coat was buttoned wrong, one side hanging lower than the other, and Vincent noticed and said nothing.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You don’t have to—”
“I do.” He looked at her. “You didn’t have to come. You came.”
“I came for him.”
“I know.” A pause. “That’s what I’m thanking you for.”
She nodded. She started to say something else, and then her phone rang.
She looked at the screen. Her face changed.
“What is it?”
“It’s Margaret. The diner.” Her voice had gone thin. “The landlord just called her. The building’s been sold.”
Vincent’s stomach dropped.
May you like
“Sold to who?”
Emily looked up at him, and he saw in her face that she already knew the answer before she said it.
