What do you call the woman who was widowed when your youngest son died?
“All rise.”
Hester and Richard Levine stood as the jury headed out for deliberations. Richard Levine kept his eyes forward. “Thank you,” he whispered to her.
Hester nodded as the guards took Levine back into custody. At this stage of momentous trials, most attorneys enjoy playing pundit, breaking down the case’s strengths and weaknesses, trying to read the jury members’ body language, predicting the outcome. Hester made her living—part of it anyway—doing just that on television. She was skilled at it. It was fun too, a mental exercise with no real-world implications, but when it came to her own cases—cases like this where so much of her heart and soul was invested—Hester let go. Juries were notoriously unpredictable, as, when you think about it, is most of life. Think about those “genius” talking heads you see on cable news. Do they ever get anything right? Who predicted a man in Tunisia would set himself on fire and start an Arab uprising? Who predicted we would be staring at smartphones for half our waking life? Who predicted Trump or Biden or COVID or any of that?
As the old Yiddish expression goes, “Man plans, God laughs.”
Hester had done her best. The jury’s decision was out of her hands. That was another key thing she had learned with age: Worry about what you can control. If you can’t control it, let it go.
That was her serenity prayer without the serenity.
Hester hurried toward her grandson. It never got easier to see the echo of her dead son David in this handsome boy-cum-man. Matthew was eighteen, taller than her David had ever been, darker skinned since Laila was black and so her grandson was biracial. But the mannerisms, the way Matthew stood against the wall, the way he looked around and took in the whole room, the way he walked, the way he hesitated before he spoke, the way he looked to his left when he was mulling over a question—it was all David. Hester relished that and let it crush her all at the same time.
When she reached Matthew, Hester said, “So what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Hester gave him the skeptical-grandma frown. “Your mom…？”
“She’s fine, Nana. Everyone is fine.”
He had said that last time he’d surprised her like this. It hadn’t proved accurate.
“When did you get back from Ann Arbor?” she asked.
“A week ago.”
She tried not to sound hurt. “And you didn’t call?”
“We know how you get at the end of a trial,” Matthew said.
Hester wasn’t sure how to counter that, so she skipped the reprimands, opting to wrap her arms around her grandson and pull him close. Matthew, who had always been an affectionate boy, hugged her back. Hester closed her eyes and tried to make time stop. For a second or two, it almost did.
With her eyes still closed and her head pressed against his chest, Hester once again said, “So what’s wrong?”
“I’m worried about Wilde.”
Chapter
Five
I haven’t heard from Wilde in a long time,” Matthew said.
They sat in the backseat of Hester’s Cadillac Escalade. Tim, Hester’s longtime driver and quasi-bodyguard, veered the vehicle onto the lower level of the George Washington Bridge. They were heading to New Jersey, more specifically the town of Westville, a mountain suburb where many years ago, Hester and her late husband, Ira, had raised their three boys: Jeffrey, a dentist living in Los Angeles; Eric, a financial analyst of some kind residing in North Carolina; and the youngest, Matthew’s father David, who was killed in a car crash when Matthew was seven years old.
“When was the last time you spoke?” Hester asked.
“When he called from the airport and said he’d be gone for a while.”
Hester nodded. That would have been when Wilde left for Costa Rica. “So nearly a year.”
“Yes.”
“You know how Wilde is, Matthew.”
“Right.”
“I know he’s your godfather.” Wilde had been David’s best friend—in Wilde’s case, David was probably his only friend. “And yes, he should be doing a better job of being there for you—”
“That’s not it,” Matthew interjected. “I’m eighteen.”
“So?”
“So I’m an adult now.”
“Again: So?”
“So Wilde was always there when I was growing up.” Then Matthew added, “Other than Mom, he was around more than anyone.”