‘You will here. People are more open.’ Maggie kept her voice gentle, so Anna didn’t feel criticized, just encouraged.
‘Still. These girls are pretty, and pretty girls are the same everywhere.’ Anna opened a Facebook page from Phrases magazine, which showed a group of artsy Goth girls. ‘This is my tribe.’
‘You are pretty, and you’re not Goth.’
‘I had a Goth friend at Congreve. I liked her, but she left school. This is her.’ Anna hit a few buttons, calling to the screen a window that showed a head shot of a wan-looking girl with matte-black hair, black eye makeup, and a red-paper crown. ‘Jamie Covington. She called herself a Visigoth. She said that was a Goth with contact lenses.’
Maggie smiled. ‘Why did she leave school?’
‘Same reason I did. It is hard to fit in there if you’re different. She tried to start a Wiccan club.’ Anna shifted her gaze, with an ironic smile. ‘You can’t see a Wiccan with a Congreve totebag, can you?’
‘No.’ Maggie laughed, getting the picture. Anna had been on the outside and identified with the outsiders.
‘She went to Ellen too. We both liked her.’ Anna glanced over. ‘And you know what, I don’t think I need to start with a therapist down here.’
‘Really?’ Maggie wasn’t sure she agreed, but kept a pleasant expression. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, I just don’t feel like I need it.’ Anna shrugged. ‘If I need to, I’ll call Ellen. She said I could if I wanted to.’
‘I told her that we would get you somebody here. You’re going to have a lot of changes to go through, and it might be good to have someone to talk to.’
‘I’ll have you, won’t I?’
‘Of course,’ Maggie answered, touched. ‘And I think we need to get you a lawyer here, too.’
‘What about James?’ Anna frowned.
‘Noah thinks you’re better off with someone down here and he’s probably right.’
‘You guys want to fire James?’ Anna recoiled. ‘I don’t. He hasn’t done anything wrong and he knows me. You liked James, didn’t you? You said you did.’
‘Yes, I did.’ Maggie kicked herself for bringing it up so soon. ‘Okay, I’ll talk it over with Noah, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Anna hesitated. ‘Hey, can I talk to you about him? You can’t tell him about it, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Maggie answered, suppressing her discomfort.
‘I don’t think he likes me. When we were picking out the sheets at Bed Bath & Beyond, he was, well, cold.’
Maggie cringed. ‘He doesn’t know you that well, Anna. He can be on the reserved side.’
‘No, that wasn’t it.’ Anna shook her head, her mouth a flat line. ‘I tried to get him to help me with the sheets, but it was all about Caleb. He was with him the whole time. It was like I didn’t even exist.’
‘Oh no.’ Maggie felt a wave of guilt. Caleb had been an only child for so long, and they both lavished a lot of attention on him. It was possible that Noah had inadvertently paid Caleb more attention than Anna. ‘I’m so sorry that happened.’
‘You don’t have to apologize, but what if he doesn’t want me living here?’
‘Yes, he does, Anna.’ Maggie covered Anna’s hand, with its beleaguered fingernails. ‘He wants you here, I know he does, you’ll see.’
‘Are you sure? Because we can always change it, like I could board at another school.’ Anna’s tone strengthened, newly distant. ‘I don’t have to live here, I just wanted to.’
‘And I want you to,’ Maggie rushed to say, her heart speaking out of turn. She couldn’t lose Anna when she had just found her again. ‘Noah wants you to live here, too. Whatever happened at Bed Bath & Beyond was a misunderstanding.’
‘Please don’t say anything to him. Do you promise?’
‘Yes, I promise.’ Maggie squeezed Anna’s hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be just fine.’
‘I hope so.’ Anna smiled. ‘I should get to bed, huh?’
‘Yes. Good night.’ Maggie kissed Anna on the cheek, but she was wondering what to do about Noah.
Chapter Twenty-three
Noah, After
TRIAL, DAY 5
The courtroom fell silent as the 911 audiotape reverberated through the speakers:
This is 911, what is your emergency?
My stepdaughter isn’t breathing. CPR isn’t working. I’m a doctor but it isn’t working. You’re not supposed to do mouth-to-mouth anymore, are you? Just chest compressions?
Yes, just chest compressions, Doctor. Is there any injury? What happened?
I think she’s been strangled. Please send an ambulance. The address is 460 Howell Road.
It’s on its way. Keep up the compressions. How old is your daughter?
Stepdaughter. She’s seventeen. The compressions aren’t working. I think I’m pressing hard enough. Listen, is the ambulance on its way?
Yes, it’s en route. Stay on the phone with me. I’ll talk you through it –
I can’t, I have to go. I can’t stay on the phone and do the compressions. Please send the ambulance. Thank you.
Noah didn’t remember the tape sounding this bad when Thomas had introduced it during direct testimony, because Thomas had set it up the way they’d planned. But now Noah was hearing it through Maggie’s ears. He couldn’t see her in the gallery, but he knew this would be killing her.
‘Dr Alderman, let’s circle back to the moment that you discover the body of your stepdaughter, strangled on your porch. You must have been shocked by that awful sight, were you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘And surely you were horrified, were you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you must’ve been grief-stricken upon realizing that such a young girl, your own stepdaughter, was dead, were you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you expressed none of those emotions in the 911 tape, did you?’
Noah hesitated. ‘No.’
Linda half-smiled. ‘There’s no excited utterance of the type one would expect from a shocked, horrified, and grief-stricken stepfather, is there?’
‘Well, no.’
‘You didn’t say, “oh my God!” or “oh no!”, did you?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t cry, did you?’
‘No.’
‘You spoke in complete sentences, did you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘You asked coherent questions, did you not?’
‘Yes.’ Noah could hear the jurors shifting behind him. Thomas would have warned him against it, but he had to offer some explanation. ‘I had those emotions but I kept them inside. I’m a professional, a doctor. I think I reacted as a doctor would.’
Linda recoiled. ‘You mean that it didn’t make any difference to you that this patient, this dead body, was your stepdaughter?’
‘No, I mean, uh, that isn’t what I meant. I meant that I went into doctor mode. I felt those things, those emotions, but I went into doctor mode.’
‘Yet for a man in “doctor mode,” you seemed to forget how to perform CPR, didn’t you?’
Noah blinked. ‘Uh, maybe I needed reminding. I knew the procedure had changed. I hadn’t performed CPR in the field. I’m not certified.’
‘It’s interesting, don’t you think, that there is no sound of you grunting or breathing hard, as someone would while they were performing chest compressions to resuscitate the body of his own stepdaughter?’
‘I don’t know why I wasn’t grunting.’ Noah was forgetting to answer only yes or no. It wasn’t so simple.
‘Dr Alderman, didn’t you text your stepdaughter, lure her to your home, and when she spurned your sexual advances yet again, kill her with your bare hands?’
‘No.’
‘Right, I keep forgetting, you found her strangled and you were shocked, horrified, and grief-stricken, correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Dr Alderman, you testified earlier that after Anna’s Petition for a PFA was filed against you, your wife asked you to leave the house, isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes.’ Noah couldn’t think about Maggie now. He understood that she had been caught in the middle.
‘Isn’t it true that after word got around about Anna’s Petition for a PFA, some of your patients stopped seeing you?’
‘Yes.’ Noah cringed. He had gotten cancellations the next day. Social media had spread the word.
‘So isn’t it true that after Anna’s Petition for a PFA, you lost your wife, your house, and some of your patients?’