Selena Kitt - Grace

“No you may not.” Judge Solomon glared at the table where Frank and the ghoul sat. “And you’d better keep that harpy away from my bench if you know what’s good for you. She’s already looking at a perjury charge. I can add contempt to that faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”

Frank tried again. “There is still the matter of the child’s well-being to consider.”

The judge looked at the lawyer over his glasses, incredulous. “I’ve already considered it, Frank. I’ve ruled on the matter. The child is going to be returned to her mother.”

“Here we go.” Donald muttered, sliding into the seat on Rob’s other side. “The stalling tactics.”

“No,” Leah breathed, the tears she’d been holding starting to fall, dropping onto her skirt, leaving fat, round wet circles on the black satin.

“I’m sorry,” Donald whispered. “I told you she would try to pull this. It’s textbook. This is what they do.”

“Your honor, you seem to have overlooked the fact that this baby is very sick.” The ghoul stood beside Frank, who clearly wasn’t making the argument to her liking. “She’s all the way on the other side of the state. She can’t travel. And it’s likely she’s ill because her mother was taking drugs while she was pregnant with the poor little thing.”

The ghoul glared at Leah and she felt the hair stand up on her arms and on the back of her neck, a low buzzing sound beginning in her head. It was just how she felt before she’d gone after the ghoul in the restaurant, and she told herself to sit there, just sit there and let the lawyers handle it, but her hands were clenched into fists at her side and her breathing was so shallow she was beginning to see spots floating in her vision.

“I don’t care if that baby is on the moon, Lady,” the judge exploded. “I want her brought here-today, before…” He checked his watch. “Before five p.m. If that baby isn’t in her mother’s arms before then, I will hold you in contempt.”

The crowd cheered and clapped, but the judge frowned and banged his gavel for quiet.

The ghoul wasn’t giving up. “Your honor, that’s just not possible. Her foster parents are in no condition to-”

“Lady, you are pushing my very last button…”

Leah looked over at Donald, who gave her a smile and a thumbs-up, making her heart soar. Clearly this wasn’t standard procedure, and she was encouraged by her lawyer’s response. She glanced down the row and saw Erica, sitting next to Clay. Leah wondered how she had managed to track Elizabeth-Rebecca-down, but she knew it must have something to do with the Mary Magdalenes. How had Donald known she was in the room? Leah hadn’t even known!

There was a woman on the other side of Clay, an attractive older blonde, and they were whispering together. Leah hadn’t seen her come in and wondered who she was. The ghoul was still trying, interrupting the judge with an excuse every time he told her to bring Grace to his courtroom, and everyone was waiting for him to snap. She glimpsed Rebecca, sitting a few rows over, and smiled to see her holding her baby in her arms.

Leah felt tears stinging her eyes at the sight, her arms aching like they had for weeks, to hold her own baby. Oh Grace, we’re so close, she thought. I’m almost there. Mommy’s here. I’m coming. Her body tingled all over with longing, a lump growing in her throat, and she could have sworn she heard Grace cry, like she always did. That little plaintive wail of her ghost baby. Where are you, Mama? Where are you?

Leah closed her eyes against it, now realizing her mistake during the questioning, telling Frank about the ghost-baby who followed her, who cried at night, who was just out of her reach, always, so glad it hadn’t ended up hurting her. Thank god for Rebecca.

Stop. Please stop.

But it wouldn’t stop. Grace kept crying. And crying. She knew that cry. Her baby was hungry. She would be sucking on her fists and turning her head from side to side, looking for her milk, but Leah didn’t have any more milk, they had taken that too.

She opened her eyes, looking over at Rebecca, expecting to see her baby boy crying, the sound morphing to Leah’s head into Grace’s hungry-cry, but he was sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms. Confused, Leah looked again to her right, where the sound was actually coming from.

“Can you please take that baby from the courtroom?” Judge Solomon was still, still dealing with the ghoul-the man clearly had the patience of a saint.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor!” the older blonde stood and Leah saw the infant in her arms she hadn’t noticed before. Clay had been in the way. “It’s just that there’s been an emergency, and I had to talk to my son-”

“Oh, Lady, please, I don’t want to hear anymore.” Judge Solomon groaned, putting his head in his hands. “Can we please just-”

“Grace!” Leah leapt out of her seat, reaching for the baby, but Rob had her caught in the strong circle of his arms, whispering that it was okay, it was okay, it wasn’t Grace, she was okay…

“Grace!” Leah screamed, pointing at the baby in the blonde’s arms, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that it was Grace, her Grace. The woman held the baby close to her, protecting her, turning instinctively away from Leah. “That’s Grace! That’s my baby!”

“Take her out of here!” Judge Solomon banged his gavel.

Donald Highbrow half-stood, asking, “Who, the baby or the mother, Your Honor?”

“Take them both!” the judge roared.

“Noooo!” Leah struggled in Rob’s arms, knowing he had misinterpreted her, believing she had mistaken the baby in the woman’s arms for a sighting of her ghost baby, but that was no ghost. That was Grace. “Rob! That’s our daughter! Let me go!”

He struggled, looking at Donald, asking, “A little help?”

Donald stood, taking Leah by her other arm, and both men carried her, feet off the ground, heading toward the door. The baby- Grace, Grace Grace! — was still crying against the blonde’s shoulder, who was standing at the end of the aisle looking bewildered, rocking the baby without thinking about it.

“Get her out of here! Quick!” the ghoul snapped, shoving Rob as they passed. He gave her a dark look, but the look on the judge’s face was darker.

“That’s my baby!” Leah screamed at the top of her lungs, but she couldn’t fight the men holding her. They were far too strong. “Her name is Grace Patricia Nolan! She has a strawberry birth mark on her belly, just above her navel. She has a teeny tiny baby toenail, so tiny you can barely see it! She-”

“Wait!” the blonde called, rushing to the front of the courtroom. “Wait!”

“Order!” The judge banged his gavel over and over. “Order in the courtroom! Order! Order!”

Leah stood between Rob and Donald, looking at the woman

“Ma’am, can I ask your name?”

“Me? My name is Gertrude Louise Webber.”

“Thank you.” The judge gave her a brief smile. “And is that your baby?”

Gertrude shook her head. “No, Your Honor.”

“Whose baby is it?”

“Mine!” Leah croaked, holding her arms out, oh they ached, like the empty dry socket of a tooth, like a phantom limb, like the rending, tearing pain of a missing womb.

“Oh for God’s sake!” The ghoul threw up her hands, waving Rob and Donald and Leah toward the door. “What does it matter? Now take her out of here and call an ambulance. They’re going to have to put her in restraints again like last time. I told you this would happen Your Honor. She’s insane. She-”

The gavel came down again, once, hard, like a gunshot, and they all froze. Judge Solomon had reached the end of his clearly very long fuse.