Chapter 45
We are going to recommend no bail. They are flight risks and they have demonstrated a capacity for witness intimidation. Thank you, I said. We will need to take a statement from you and the children. We have a child advocacy center set up near the station. It is comfortable. There are toys.
They can talk to a specialist, not a cop. I nodded. That is fine. We are ready. I looked down at Mia. She was staring at the spot where the car with Monica had disappeared. She was trembling slightly, not from fear, but from the release of adrenaline. The monster was gone. The witch was in the cage.
‘Is she coming back, Grandpa?’ Mia whispered. No, honey,’ I said. ‘Not for a very long time.’ We walked toward Rachel’s car. I held their hands tight. Behind us, the massive cruise ship loomed a monument to excess and fake happiness. But we were walking away from it. We were walking toward my old truck, toward my house, toward a life that would be smaller, simpler, but infinitely more real.
The handcuffs had clicked, but for us it sounded like the turning of a key unlocking a prison door. We were finally free. The family court building in downtown Miami smelled of floor wax and stale coffee. It was a place where dreams went to die and where the grim reality of broken homes was shuffled through the system in 15minute intervals.
But for us, this was not just a procedural hearing. This was the final battleground. I sat on the hard wooden bench in the front row. To my left sat Rachel Stein, my lawyer, who looked as sharp and lethal as a switchblade in her charcoal suit. To my right sat a courtappointed guardian ad lightum, a soft-spoken woman named Mrs.
Higgins, who had spent the last two weeks interviewing Mia and Leo. And across the aisle sat Austin and Monica. They were not wearing their designer clothes today. They were wearing orange jumpsuits provided by the county jail. Their wrists were shackled to their waists. The transformation was startling. Without his expensive watch and his floral shirts, Austin looked small.
He looked like a child playing dress up in a convict’s costume. Monica looked worse. Her roots were showing her makeup was gone and her face was a mask of sullen rage. She kept glancing at the back of the courtroom where the press was banned from entering, hoping for an audience that wasn’t there. All rise, the baiff shouted.