“Describe him to me,” Mrs. G said.
“Okay. I’ll try. But I don’t think words will do him justice. But he has this little tuft of soft-looking dark hair, but only right on top of his head. And his little lips and ears are so perfectly shaped, I swear it hurts to look at them. And his skin is almost . . . like you could see through it, it’s so new and perfect. You can see the little veins under his cheeks, but just in a nice way. I mean, it’s good skin. It’s enough. It’s just so new.”
“Here,” Isabel said to Mrs. G. “Give me your hand.”
Mrs. G reached out carefully, and Isabel took the hand, and guided it to the top of Ramon’s soft hair. Mrs. G stroked the baby’s head slowly, her eyes closed, head cocked as if listening to faraway music. Then she very gently touched his cheeks and nose.
Raymond was watching her face, so he noticed the moment when everything changed. When the rapture fell away, and was replaced by . . . well, he wasn’t sure what. And he wasn’t sure why. But it wasn’t good. Somehow she had fallen into some kind of emotional pit in that moment.
Maybe she’s just really tired, he thought.
He helped her sit in one of the plastic chairs.
“So tell me what I missed at the trial,” Isabel said.
Raymond pulled himself up another chair, still staring at that tiny brand-new face. Realizing it was the closest he had come to seeing Luis Velez.
“Well, I missed a big part of the morning, too, of course,” he said, because Mrs. G seemed to be lost in another world. “But in the afternoon, they examined one of the witnesses. It was good, what he said. He made it really clear that he thought the defendant was lying about parts of the thing. He was very direct about that, even when it got him in a little trouble with the judge. He wasn’t supposed to give his opinion, but he did anyway. So at that point I was thinking it was going really well for the prosecution, but then at the very end of the cross-examination, the defense attorney just sort of turned it all around again.”
Isabel’s smile dropped away. “Yeah, they’ll do that,” she said. She turned her face to Mrs. G, who was staring in the direction of the wall. “And what did Raymond and I miss in the morning, Millie?”
Mrs. G turned her face back toward them as if waking from a deep sleep. “I’m sorry. What again?”
“What did I make Raymond miss in the morning?”
“Oh, not very much, I’d say. The first of the two witnesses. But she didn’t say anything very different from the second one. She was more shy about her observations. That was the main difference. If she had opinions about the whole thing, she kept them to herself.”
They sat quietly for a brief moment. Then Raymond heard a knock at the room’s open door. He turned around to see the young policewoman who had driven them to the hospital that morning. Though, looking back, Raymond thought that ride felt like a thing that had taken place weeks ago.
“May I come in?” she asked.
Raymond looked to Isabel to see if she still felt bristly about the officer’s presence. But her face looked open and soft.
“Yes, of course you may,” she said. “I’m glad to get a chance to thank you for getting me here safely this morning.”
The officer moved close to the bed, slowly and reverently, as if in church.
“I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I know I came on a little strong when I first saw you this morning, but I’m two months pregnant, and I’m just so excited about it I can hardly contain myself. I didn’t know who you were at the time—just that you were ready to go into labor any minute. But after I found out you were the widow, I wanted to . . . you know . . . do something helpful.”
“Getting me here in time was helpful,” Isabel said. “This is Ramon.”
The officer gently stroked Ramon’s head. “He’s gorgeous,” she said. “Are you staying tonight?”
“No, I can’t. My insurance doesn’t cover much. My sister is coming by to get me after work.”
“Oh dear. You’d think one night in the hospital would be good.”
“Hard to pay for, though.”
“You’re not going to try to come to court tomorrow, are you?”
“Probably not. I’ll ask Raymond and Millie to fill me in on what I missed. But the day after, most likely. Oh, the judge will just love that. Won’t he? First I shoot off my big mouth when I’m not supposed to. Then I come back with a newborn who cries . . .”
“Well, just don’t do both at once,” the officer said.
“No, I won’t. I’ll be quiet. I’m embarrassed about that.” She looked down at the baby in her arms for a beat or two. “It’s hard not to say the truth, though.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem with trials. Somehow they have it in their heads, the judge and jury, that they’ll decide what’s the truth. But the truth already happened. They can’t decide what happened. They can only be right or wrong about it. Seems like too many times they’re wrong.”
The officer fell silent, as if regretting the direction in which she’d taken the conversation.
No one else cared to speak after that.
“Well,” the woman said. “I’ll leave you be.”
She turned and walked out of the room with no more words spoken.
Raymond jumped up and followed her out into the hall.
“Excuse me,” he called after her, because he had forgotten her name.
She stopped. Turned around.
“I need to ask a favor of you,” he said.
“Okay.”
“It’s kind of a big favor. You might say no.”
“Try me.”
“My friend who I brought to the courthouse today. The elderly woman. She’s really tired. I mean, it’s a little scary how much this day was too hard for her. I was wondering if you could give us a ride back to the subway station.”
He watched her face soften, and a deep fear in his gut softened with it. And he knew they—both he and Mrs. G—would be okay.
“I’ll go you one better than that,” she said. “I’ll give you a ride home. Wherever you live, I’ll get you home safely.”
Mrs. G fell asleep on the ride in the back of the patrol car, then woke with a start for no reason Raymond could see or hear.