Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

“You were lonely, too?”

“Not exactly. I was in my mid-thirties. I had spent all my twenties into my early thirties sleeping around, having fun, using birth control, you know? It was those times. I was a free spirit, no ties, just a party girl. And what happened was, I saw him, and how much he loved his kids. I wanted children.” She shrugged. “I was worried I would get too old, and there he was, needing affection. We got close. I loved him.”

“By his kids you mean Christina and Alex?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“I got pregnant. When he found out, he insisted on marrying me. I told him no, but he wouldn’t listen. He wanted our child to be legitimate. But we never planned on a conventional family scene. That was okay. I just wanted kids so much.”

“So your first child, Gabriel, was born in 1974.”

“And my second,” she turned her head toward Stefan, “came in 1975.”

“How did Constantin take the births?”

“He understood I wanted them. He accepted it.”

“Yet he never lived with you?”

“His daughter, Christina, was very attached to her parents, more than normal, I would say. When her mother died, she broke down, needed counseling, the whole nine yards. The son-Alex-hardly talked to anyone for the first year after his mother’s death. They all missed her. Constantin’s first wife was very cultured. Her children knew me as just this low-life hippie housekeeper.”

“This Constantin was a snob, eh?”

She clearly hated this question. “Kind of.”

“What about your children? Gabriel and Stefan? Did Constantin come to visit, bring little toys? Bring hugs and kisses on his visits?”

“When they were babies, he did. But he got sick and aged fast-he let go.”

“He treated them like unwanted illegitimates, it seems.”

Her face gave them an answer.

“He left money for you in a trust?”

“When he was failing, there at the end of his life, he told me he wanted to give some to us. I thought that was great, really generous.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

The jurors appeared shocked.

“Sounded like a lot to me then, too,” Wanda said, “but it amounts to only about four hundred a month. A lot of it goes to pay for health insurance. I still clean houses, and sometimes the companies I work for have bad coverage or none. The rest bought our groceries. We ate a lot of noodles.”

“His other children inherited much more, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t know about that. I thought he was a baker. I didn’t know he had much money. He didn’t act like it.”

“Why keep your marriage secret?”

“He wanted it that way, and so he put it in the agreement. I didn’t care then. Now I see some of my decisions weren’t so smart. I dropped out of high school to get a job so I could leave home, and later I got arrested at peace marches from here to Washington, D.C.” She frowned. “I posed nude for a girly magazine for a few bucks back in my twenties, too. I can’t justify my life, except to say I did what I wanted mostly.” She pulled on her gray ponytail. “One thing right was having those boys.”

Stefan wiped at his eyes with his hand until Klaus handed him an immaculate handkerchief.

“I only wish for their sakes I had never agreed to keep my marriage secret, but I did, so I stuck by the terms for a long, long time. Does my telling everything here in court today mean I’m giving up that money?”

“Maybe not,” Klaus said. “What you testify to as a subpoenaed witness can be protected.”

Jaime was taking fast notes. Nina assumed he was beginning to realize the testimony could be used to hurt Stefan. Klaus rocked back on his feet a moment. Oh, no, she thought, he’s forgotten what he was talking about.

A pall fell over the courtroom. “Klaus,” Nina whispered.

“A moment, Your Honor.” Klaus walked unsteadily back to her.

Nina handed him a sheet of legal paper. He read it, nodded. “Thank you,” he said with great dignity, and asked Wanda Wyatt, “Which of the four children found out?”

Judge Salas looked sharply at Wanda. Nina heard murmurings in the audience.

“Tell us,” Klaus said, gathering steam again, like an aged locomotive that has just had a fresh load of coal dumped into its boiler.

“Gabe saw me looking at something Constantin gave me,” Wanda said. “Crying over it, if you must know.”

“Now we are getting somewhere. What was this something?”

“A copy of a photo from a book. Constantin as a boy, dressed in a sailor suit.”

“Acting as page to the last tsar, Nicholas the Second.”

“So he always said.”

“He must have come from a good family.”

“Yes. He told me they were nobility but they all died during the revolution.”

“Your son Gabriel caught you weeping over this picture, and so you told him the truth at last.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Several months ago.”

“Do you remember exactly when?”

“No.”

“You told him, although you risked losing your monthly stipend?”

“Gabriel missed having a father, more than Stefan ever did.”

Sitting beside Nina, Stefan winced. His mother had hurt him many, many times with her opacity, Nina suspected.

“Gabe is so like his father in his character and his appearance,” Wanda went on. “I used to look at him, seeing Kostya’s nose, Kostya’s eyes. He deserved to know. I didn’t want to keep it from him anymore. The unfairness of it-it eats at your soul, Mr. Pohlmann. I started thinking, I should tell him. He would have an example, he would understand himself better if he knew.”

“So you told Gabe.”

“And it did help him,” Wanda said. “Now he knows that he comes from a good family.”

“And then Gabriel told Stefan? Or did you?” Klaus said. No, no, no. That wasn’t what they wanted to elicit, that Stefan knew! In spite of her resolve to remain impassive, Nina flinched. Jaime loved it. He shuffled papers, cleared his throat, and practically did the rhumba to make sure the jury paid special attention to the answer.

But the answer didn’t help him after all. “No one told Stefan,” Wanda said. “I swear it. Gabe promised he wouldn’t tell.”

Stefan whispered to Nina, “And I swear my mom can tell the truth when she really wants to.”

One of the new school of lawyers who prefer to save their feet, or maybe don’t think on them very well, Jaime didn’t rise from his chair for the cross-examination. Bad sign, all that relaxation. Klaus drank water, smacking his lips, his job done, well done, as far as he was concerned.

“What astounding news that would be for a person to hear-that he had two siblings and an entirely different family history. How do you know Gabriel didn’t rush off to share this information with his brother?”

“I asked him not to. I couldn’t see the point in confusing Stefan with information that wasn’t relevant to his life. And Stefan had a girlfriend. He’s not the type to keep secrets. He would tell her.” His mother didn’t even give Stefan a nod of recognition when she said these hurtful things, she just continued blithely on. “Gabe swore he wouldn’t tell Stefan. He keeps his word.”

“You considered the information not relevant, eh? Well, it’s certainly relevant today,” Jaime said.

“Objection! This is improper,” Nina said. “Not a question.” She sputtered on for a bit, hoping to soften a little of the harm he had done.

“Sustained.”

“Now, Mrs. Wyatt,” Jaime said. “Mr. Zhukovsky purchased a small annuity for the support of you and his children. Did he leave you anything else?”

“A small souvenir or two.”

“Nothing valuable?”