Chapter 8 - THE MEAN LADY IN CREAM
The silence in the courtroom was absolute.
Spectators in the fourth row stopped breathing. The stenographer’s hands hovered motionless above her machine, the paper tape hanging limp. The only sound in the vast room was the distant hiss of the autumn wind outside and the rhythmic, muffled beat of blood hammering in Julian Vance’s ears.
Leo pointed with his small right index finger.
He did not drop Barnaby; he cradled the worn beige rabbit in his left arm, his small hand holding the toy tightly against his navy lapel, while his right arm remained extended toward the ivory-clad woman.
"What you and the mean lady did," Leo said.
His voice was clear, high, and entirely devoid of anger. It carried only the pure, terrifying simplicity of a child reciting what his own eyes had witnessed.
"Two weeks ago," Leo continued, his small voice echoing off the mahogany paneling. "When Mommy was in the clinic getting the heart monitor for the baby. You were in the library, Daddy. I was hiding in the secret reading tent behind the big globe with Barnaby."
Clara Sterling began to hyperventilate. She pushed her chair backward, the wooden legs screeching horribly against the floorboards, her hands shaking so violently she dropped her leather clutch to the floor with a loud thud.
"Julian, stop him!" Clara shrieked, her aristocratic composure completely shredded into hysterical panic. "He’s making it up! His mother coached him! She’s trying to extort you before the decree is signed!"
"I am not making it up," Leo stated calmly, turning his gaze back to his father.
The six-year-old child looked straight into the eyes of the feared Midwest mafia kingpin.
"The mean lady had a little brown glass bottle, Daddy," Leo said softly. "The one with the dropper. She told you that if Mommy drank the prenatal herbal tea with the drops inside, the baby would stop growing. She said if the baby didn't come, Mommy would be too sad to fight you for the trust. And you told her..."
Leo’s chin quivered for the first time. A single, hot tear broke over his long lashes, tracking down his flushed cheek.
"...you told her to put it in the pantry. On the top shelf. Behind the honey."
The courtroom detonated into pandemonium.
A collective, horrified shriek ripped through the gallery. Two female spectators in the third row stood up, covering their mouths in utter revulsion. Attorneys scrambled to their feet, their papers scattering across the tables, while the press reporters in the front row slammed their laptops shut, already sprinting toward the rear exit doors to broadcast the most monstrous scandal in Missouri history.
At the petitioner’s table, Audrey Vance went completely, horrifyingly rigid.
Her hand was still resting on her eight-month pregnant belly.
The world seemed to lose all sound, all light, all gravity. Her mind raced back through the last fourteen days—the sudden, violent abdominal cramps she had suffered last Thursday, the emergency ambulance ride to Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the doctors who had been baffled by her sudden, unexplained uterine contractions.
She had drunk the chamomile tea from the pantry.
She had drunk it every evening before bed, believing Julian’s housekeeper had prepared it to help her sleep.
Audrey slowly raised her head.
May you like
Her hazel eyes, wide and dilated in sheer, unadulterated horror, locked onto her husband’s face.
She did not scream. She did not weep. She looked at him as if he were a demon that had climbed out of an open grave.
