Unintended Consequences (15 page)

“Morning, ladies,” he said as he approached their park bench. “Have room for me?” Brianna ran off to join the other children as Ralph squeezed onto the end of the wooden seat. “Hard to stay indoors and paint on a day like this.”

“When’s your show?” Ellen asked.

“Opening is two weeks from tomorrow. But I’m set for the show, I’ve just got to pack up the canvases and get them to the gallery. There’s some new stuff I’m experimenting with now. That’s what’s keeping me busy. Never too busy for an hour in the park, though, when a spring day is beckoning.”

Sunny smiled, but she could feel that flutter in her heart again, the annoying ba-dum, ba-dum that began every time she saw Ralph.

“I hope you’ll both come to the opening. With your husbands, of course.”

“Why spoil it with my husband?” Ellen said with a coy smile.

All the women flirted with Ralph. He was tall and muscled, and his angular face and wavy black hair set off his cerulean eyes. The day’s growth of stubble he usually sported on his chin added to his rakish good looks. With his wife’s income as an investment banker, Ralph could stay home in their loft apartment and pursue his artistic talent. Caring for Brianna when nursery school wasn’t in session was part of their marital bargain. An attractive man in a gaggle of playground moms—it was inevitable that he’d become the object of their fantasies.

“Well, your husband can keep you company while my wife is dragging me around to meet and greet.”

“There you go, bringing up your wife again.”

“Yes, I suppose that is an annoying habit of mine.”

“Well, I’ll overlook it this time, but really, what’s the point of having a man in our midst if he’s just going to talk about his wife?” Ellen said with a fake pout.

“I’ll work on that,” Ralph said with mock seriousness.

Sunny envied the casual joking of her friends. She didn’t consider herself to be shy, yet something in her didn’t allow for playfulness. A piece missing from her, she thought, when she bothered to think about herself. She looked at her watch, a digital chronometer she’d bought for timing her runs but wore all the time, preferring it over the gold Rado watch Eric had given her when Rachel was born. The gold watch was beautiful, with its round face surrounded by tiny diamonds, and she wore it on the few occasions when they got dressed up. She’d never owned anything so beautiful. She never really felt comfortable wearing it, though; it didn’t fit her sense of herself. But she’d had that feeling about a lot of things over the course of her life.

She stood up and called over to Rachel. “It’s time to go meet Daddy. Say goodbye to your friends.” She turned to Ralph and Ellen and said goodbye. As she walked away, she wondered if their conversation would change with just the two of them. She wondered whether, if she had been left alone with Ralph, she’d gather up the gumption to flirt with him. It wasn’t as if she didn’t love Eric; certainly she did. But with his long hours at the hospital, leaving her alone with her thoughts, she sometimes let her mind wander.

Silly of me, she thought, as she took Rachel’s hand and headed to the hospital to meet her husband for lunch.

The next evening, Sunny fussed over the floral arrangement. She’d picked out each flower that afternoon at the florist shop two blocks from her apartment. There were bunches of flowers already made up into bouquets, wrapped in cellophane, and ready to be placed in a glass vase. Sunny liked arranging the flowers herself, though, deciding which ones worked well with each other, how a gardenia looked different when placed next to fern or rubbing up against a daffodil. The flowers were beautiful this time of year. No matter how she arranged them, it would brighten the dark foyer. It had to be exact, though, an elegant display sitting atop their antique foyer table. It seemed as if she’d searched every antique shop in the East Village before venturing north to Gramercy Park, looking for the right table for their entryway. And then, almost magically, at a neighbor’s tag sale, she’d stumbled across a slim dark mahogany table, built in the early 1900s by a Chinese artisan. How lucky she was! It was just what she fancied, just the style that Eric’s mother would admire. The flowers had to be positioned just right to complement the luscious wood grain of the table. That’s what she wanted Eric’s parents to see first when they entered her apartment—perfection.

It wasn’t the first time Eric’s parents had visited from the home they’d retired to in Florida. They had visited once before, shortly after she and Eric moved to New York City and Eric had started his residency. They had hardly any furniture then. The painted white walls were peeling at the edges and the wood floors were bare. They weren’t expected to have turned it into a home yet. Now, though, Mrs. Bergman’s practiced eye would certainly take in the results of Sunny’s attempts at decoration.

“It’s fine,” Eric called in from the living room, a note of annoyance in his voice. He’d been short with her ever since he’d returned from his visit to his sister. Whenever she tried to change his mood, he’d brush her off. “Stop fiddling with the flowers. Mom’s not going to care whether the rose is in front or back.”

“You’re wrong. She notices everything.” Phyllis Bergman was a perfectionist. Her home could have been featured in
Architectural Digest
. Although she’d furnished it with a decorator, Sunny knew Phyllis could have done it on her own. She had impeccable taste.

“You don’t have anything to prove to Mom. She already adores you.”

“She adores Rachel. She tolerates me.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

That was the problem with Eric. He assumed everyone loved the things he loved. If he loved Manhattan, Sunny must love Manhattan. If he loved sushi, everyone must. And since he loved Sunny, so must his parents. Sunny thought Eric’s father liked her well enough, but his mother was another story. No matter how hard she tried, Sunny could detect the scent of disapproval from her mother-in-law. In her heart, Sunny knew Mrs. Bergman thought she’d trapped Eric, thought this woman from a working-class home had latched on to the handsome medical student from a wealthy family and purposely became pregnant.

The truth was so different. Yes, Sunny had become pregnant unexpectedly. And yes, she and Eric had married sooner than they’d planned. But Eric had implored her to keep the baby. She wanted to end her pregnancy and had gone so far as to make an appointment at the clinic. Over and over Eric begged her to cancel the appointment. They’d argue, she’d cry, they’d argue all over again. For weeks, it felt like an unending cycle of tears and infuriation. Eventually she relented. Eric was too forceful to resist.

It had been so hard to give up nursing school. Since childhood Sunny had dreamed of becoming a nurse. She loved Rachel—certainly she did—yet she looked forward to the time she could return to school. There had been no question that Eric would continue his studies. After all, medicine was more important than nursing. A husband’s career was more important than a wife’s. She had agreed with him when he laid out their future: He’d finish medical school, then his residency, and then settle into a practice. She could return to school later. By then, Rachel would be in kindergarten, maybe even first grade. It made sense to postpone her dream for the family, Sunny often told herself.

“Listen,” Eric called to Sunny, “don’t mention to Mom and Dad that I visited Carol. I don’t want them worrying that she’s relapsing again.”

“Sure.” He hadn’t wanted Sunny to say anything to Carol, either, if she spoke to her. Carol felt too ashamed of her weakness, he’d said. It would be humiliating if Sunny mentioned it. “Maybe she’d like to know I’m rooting for her, that she can lean on me too,” Sunny had said.

But Eric was adamant. “No!” he’d barked at her. “Just trust me. I know her better than you.” And so Sunny kept quiet.

“So, are you getting enough sleep?” Robert Bergman asked his son as Sunny cleared the dinner dishes from the table.

“Sure, Dad, it’s not a problem.”

“Because I heard how they make you residents work day and night and then the next day again.”

“It’s not like that anymore. Hospitals changed that a long time ago. I get enough sleep. Don’t worry about it.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t pick surgery,” Mrs. Bergman chimed in. “I mean, you waited so long to settle down that you might as well go into the field that pays the most. You don’t have as much time to save your money as those younger residents.”

Sunny could follow the conversation in the dining room as she stacked the dishes in the sink. Their apartment was small—the dining room was a tiny alcove next to the kitchen—so from just a few feet away, she could discern the disapproval in the tone of the question, and she peeked in to see Eric’s reaction. His voice remained even, but Sunny saw that his body carried the same tension he’d displayed since his visit to his sister. “I picked pediatrics because I wanted to work with children. You know that, Mom. We’ve had this discussion before.”

“I know, I know, but surgery’s where the money is. That’s nothing to sneeze at. With money, you could live someplace nice, buy some decent furniture. It’s no shame to make money. Although, I suppose I should be grateful that you’re in medicine. For a while, I thought you’d end up in jail.”

“Phyllis, that’s enough! Eric’s a fine boy. You’re exaggerating his youthful indiscretions.”

Sunny busied herself in the kitchen, making coffee and preparing the dessert. She didn’t want to be part of their conversation, afraid that if she were, she’d blurt out something she’d regret.

Eric’s father cleared his throat. “Your mother has a point, son. You remember my friend Dan Edelman, don’t you? His son became a pediatric cardiologist. He’s still working with children but doing something special, not just ordinary, you know what I mean? And he schedules his surgeries. No phone calls waking him in the middle of the night.”

Sunny glanced back into the dining room and could see Eric’s body stiffen, his mouth set in a rigid grin. “Sure, Dad, I know what you mean. A pediatrician doesn’t give you enough bragging rights with your friends.”

“No, no,” came a chorus from both his parents.

Eric’s mother reached over and patted his hand. “Whatever you do, we’re proud of you. You’ve always been too sensitive to our advice. We’re just trying to be helpful.”

“Coffee’s ready,” Sunny chimed in from the kitchen.

All heads turned toward her voice. As Sunny walked into the room with a platter of homemade gingersnap cookies, they smiled at her and then at each other, the picture of a happy family.

C
HAPTER

16

Twenty-One Days

T
he LaGrange County Courthouse stood on a tree-lined street in the center of town. The ornate three-story building with a cylindrical steeple in the center reminded Dani of movies depicting small-town America in the ’40s and ’50s. It seemed as far removed from the clamor of Manhattan as a place could be. She’d been standing outside courtroom 215 for a half hour, waiting for George’s case to be called.

The hearing on her motion for a court order to exhume the body alleged to be Angelina Calhoun’s was the first case on the morning docket. She and Melanie had arrived in LaGrange the night before. Although just a local superior court, far removed from the majesty and formality of the United States Supreme Court, Melanie had peppered her with questions last night, as if she would be arguing before that austere body. And although this lower court was usually not the final arbiter of justice, the right to exhume the dead child’s body might make the difference between life and death for George Calhoun.

Dani had argued motions or appeals dozens of times, maybe hundreds, yet each time she stood before a judge or a panel of judges, she needed to remind herself to calm down. She usually did settle her nerves once she actually started speaking. Even interruptions from the bench didn’t rattle her train of thought. But at the beginning, as she’d rise from her seat, she’d feel the dampness of her hands and the quickening of her heartbeat.

At five minutes before 10, she and Melanie headed into the courtroom. Their motion papers had been submitted, and the LaGrange County prosecuting attorney had filed his objections. Almost immediately after Dani sat at the table in front of the court reserved for defendants’ counsel, a middle-aged man wearing a brown tweed suit that seemed much too warm for the balmy spring day approached her.

“Ms. Trumball, I presume,” he said as he held out his hand. “I’m Ted Landry.”

“That’s me,” she answered as she shook his hand. “And this is my associate, Melanie Quinn.”

“I must say I was surprised to get your papers. It’s a bit late in the game, don’t you think?”

Dani shrugged. “Well, I certainly wish we had more time on the clock. But as long as the clock is still ticking, there’s still time to uncover the truth.”

“Or,” he said with a smile, “to throw monkey wrenches in the path of the truth.”

He turned as the bailiff entered the courtroom. They knew the judge would be close behind him. “Well, good luck to you, Ms. Trumball. May the truth win out.” He headed back to the prosecutor’s table just before Judge Edwards entered the courtroom.

“All rise,” intoned the bailiff, and everyone in the courtroom did as instructed. “You may be seated,” he said after Judge Edwards had settled himself in his leather swivel chair behind the raised bench.

“
People against George Calhoun
,” he called.

Dani answered, “Ms. Trumball for the defendant.”

“Mr. Landry for the state.”

Judge Edwards looked over at her table. “You have a motion before me, Ms. Trumball. I’ve read the papers, yours and the state’s. Is there anything else you’d like to add?”

She stood up. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Well, now, before you get started, let me tell you what I’m thinking. I’ve read the cases you’ve put in your brief, but I have to say this just looks like a Hail Mary to me. Your client’s been in prison over seventeen years and he’s first asking to do DNA testing on the child’s body?”

“Your Honor, I agree this appears to be late in the game, but my client notified his prior attorney at least five years ago of the reasons for exhuming the body claimed to be his daughter, and that attorney failed to follow through. It was a clear dereliction of his duty to defend his client diligently.”