Serena's POV
Judge Harold Whitlock has a face like a boiled egg.
It's pink and smooth and slightly shiny, with two small blue eyes set deep in it, and he looks down at me from the bench of Courtroom 14B with an air of long, weary, fastidious disappointment.
"Ms Lowell."
"Your Honour."
"Or whoever you are."
A small titter from the gallery.
I don't turn my head. I stand at the defence table in my second-best suit, with Judith Weiss at my elbow, small and furious and ferocious, and Dominic behind me in the first row of the gallery with his hands clasped between his knees.
"The court is aware," says Whitlock, "that you have had a very short time to prepare."
"Yes, Your Honour."
"Mr Vance's motion is to the effect that you are an impostor, as a matter of law."
"I'm aware."
"What do you say?"
"That I'm not."
"Then I'm sure you'll have proof."
"I do, Your Honour."
"Good." He glances at the clock. "I give you twenty minutes."
***
It's the most remarkable twenty minutes of my life.
I watch it unfold like a film.
Ruth Pelletier takes the stand first, white-haired and upright in her grey wool coat. She sets her medical bag on the rail. In a low, precise, faintly French voice she describes the night Abel Thorne carried a burned woman into her clinic on Isle au Haut. She lists every injury. She holds up a Polaroid.
She walks across to the bench.
I hold out my left hand.
Whitlock looks.
He looks for a very long time.
"A gold crown," says Ruth. "Upper left molar. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Circa 2012. I took an X-ray myself at intake." She lays it down. "And here is the dental record held by Dr Samuel Fisk, of Brattle Street, who has kept an off-site backup of every patient file since 1994. He has never heard of a water leak in Worcester."
Vance, at the other table, doesn't move.
But I see his fingers, resting on his folio, go quite white at the knuckles.
Abel's next.
He takes the oath with his cap in his hand, and sits on the edge of the witness chair as if it might bite. He tells it in his own words, slow and flat and Maine. A black night. A cove. The sound of a bang you could feel in your teeth.
"And I seen her," he says. "Floatin'. Face down, in a bit of wreckage. I thought she was dead. I got a boathook under her arm and hauled her over the side, and she coughed. And the first thing she said, Judge, was a name."
"Whose name?"
"Dom." Abel doesn't look round. "Just Dom. Over and over."
My throat burns.
I don't look at the gallery.
"Mr Vance," says Whitlock. "Do you have any questions?"
Vance rises.
He does it gracefully. He buttons his jacket.
"A few, Your Honour." He turns to Abel, mild and courteous. "Mr Thorne. You are, I believe, a lobsterman."
"Ayuh."
"Of limited education."
"I read."
"And you've been paid, I understand, by Mr Hale. In the amount of eighty thousand dollars."
"I never took it."
"Didn't you?"
"I sent it back. Twice."
A rustle in the gallery.
"You may have an interest in the outcome."
"I got an interest in the truth." Abel peers at him under his bushy white eyebrows. "You ever been hit by a boat, mister?"
"I... no."
"Then you don't know how loud it is when it stops."
Vance sits.
There's a short silence.
"Is that the extent of your case, Ms Weiss?" says Whitlock, drily.
"No, Your Honour." Judith's voice is very quiet. "I'd like to introduce a sibling DNA report."
The first flicker crosses Vance's face.
"The defendant's sister is Tessa Quinn. Ms Quinn was tested last night, in the presence of an agent of the United States Attorney's Office, at an accredited laboratory. The defendant was tested simultaneously." She hands up a document. "The probability of full sibling relationship is ninety-nine point eight per cent."
Whitlock reads it.
"Ms Quinn is, I understand," he says slowly, "a rather unreliable witness."
"She's the defendant's sister, Your Honour."
"She's also a woman wanted for breaking into a private home."
"She's wanted," says Judith, "by Mr Vance."
"Objection."
"Overruled." He takes off his glasses. "I'm afraid, Ms Weiss, that a family test isn't conclusive. The defendant may have found an actual relative. She may have..."
"Your Honour."
The voice comes from the back of the room.
It's flat, Midwestern, tired. It's the voice I've heard once a month for three years, on a phone, on a pier, saying not yet.
I turn.
A woman has come in through the double doors. She's wearing a navy suit, and one arm is in a black sling. She's got a face like a bruise, pale and drawn, and a badge clipped to her belt.
"Special Agent Hannah Cho," she says. "FBI. I'd like to testify."
***
The courtroom goes still.
I watch Whitlock's face.
It's the first genuine emotion I've seen on it. A sort of cautious, narrowing surprise, as when a man steps on a stair that isn't there.
"Agent Cho," he says. "This is a civil matter."
"I'm aware."
"You aren't on the witness list."
"I'm aware of that, too." She walks up the aisle. She doesn't hurry. "I have a statement for the court. It'll take two minutes."
"Then make it."
She stops in front of the bench.
She looks at me.
It's the first time we've stood in a room in daylight. She's smaller than I thought. Her eyes are very dark and very clear, and in them is something I've never seen before. A kind of fierce, quiet pride.
"Your Honour," she says. "I have known the defendant for three years."
"Indeed."
"I've met her, in person, nineteen times. In New York, New Jersey and Maine. I've spoken to her by phone on thirty-six further occasions. On the night of October fourteenth, three years ago, I stood on a dock in Rockland and waited for a yacht that didn't come." Her voice doesn't shake. "I was there at four in the morning. I was the first federal officer to hear she was alive."
"And?"
"And in the spring of the following year, I took her fingerprints."
A pause.
Vance's mouth opens.
She lays a manila folder on the bench.
"Eighteen points of comparison. Ten are required."
Silence.
The great, slow, delicious silence of a room in which something has been decided.
I can't breathe.
Whitlock looks down.
He opens the folder, and I watch him count. His lips move. He turns a page. He turns another.
At last he closes it.
"Mr Vance," he says, without lifting his head.
"Your Honour..."
"Do you wish to be heard on the matter of the fingerprints?"
"I..." Vance clears his throat. "May I have a moment to consult?"
"I imagine you may."
He sits.
Judge Whitlock leans back.
"The motion," he says, to the room at large, "is denied."
A sound goes up from the gallery like a sigh.
"The Court finds that, for the purposes of the proceedings before the grand jury, the identity of the defendant has been sufficiently established. Ms Lowell, you are free to give testimony." He pauses. His small blue eyes slide, very slowly, to Vance. "And Mr Vance. I should be very careful, if I were you."
He bangs the gavel.
I don't hear it.
I'm already moving, between the tables, past the rail, into the gallery, and into a pair of arms.
Dominic.
He holds me so tightly that my feet leave the floor.
"You did it," he whispers into my hair. "You did it. You did it."
"We did."
"Serena."
"I know."
"Serena."
"I know."
Across the room, Hannah Cho catches my eye. She gives me a very small, very dry, very satisfied nod.
I laugh.
It cracks out of me, wet and helpless, and I bury my face against his collar, in the smell of him, soap and wool and cold air. For the first time in three years, I'm not afraid.
"There's something I have to do," Dominic says, after a while, very low.
I draw back.
His face has changed.
The joy's still in it, but under the joy there's something older and quieter. A kind of terrible, steady resolve.
"What?"
"I'm going to Windward."
"Now?"
"Tonight."
"Dom, the grand jury's tomorrow..."
"I'll be back by dawn." He touches my cheek. "I have to open it, Serena. The envelope. I can't wait any longer."
I understand.
I take his hand.
"I'll come with you."
"No. You have to prepare."
"Dom..."
"I need to do this alone." His voice is gentle. "But I'll tell you this. When I come back, I'll know."
"Know what?"
"Whether my father was a murderer," says Dominic. "Or just a man who loved the wrong friend."