Part 4
Courtrooms aren’t built for comfort. The benches are hard. The air smells faintly of old paper and floor cleaner. People sit too close and pretend not to listen to one another’s tragedies.
Mark and I sat together for the first hearing, Lily kept home with a friend of mine from church who’d raised three boys and did not scare easily. Mark’s attorney, a woman named Patel, spoke in precise sentences that made the judge’s eyes sharpen. She laid out the toxicology results, the pattern, the doctor’s opinion. She didn’t use dramatic language. She didn’t have to.
Natalie sat on the other side with her attorney and a look that tried to be calm but kept slipping. When the judge asked if Natalie had an explanation for the child’s repeated exposure, Natalie said Lily must have found medicine somewhere. She said she’d never intentionally given Lily anything. She said Mark’s father had never liked her and was twisting things.
The judge’s face didn’t change. “Supervised visitation will remain in place,” the judge said. “No unsupervised contact pending further investigation.”
Outside the courtroom, Natalie’s attorney approached Patel, talking about plea negotiations, parenting classes, probation. Mark stared straight ahead like if he looked at Natalie he might do something he’d regret. I put a hand on his shoulder, not to comfort him, exactly, but to anchor him.
The supervised visitation center looked like a daycare that had decided to become a police station. Bright walls. Tiny chairs. Cameras in corners. A staff member at the front desk who smiled like her job required it and watched like her job required that, too.
