Chapter 8 - The Annapolis Hearing
The preliminary injunction hearing took place in a small, windowless courtroom on the third floor of the Anne Arundel County Courthouse. The air conditioning was broken, and the smell of damp wool and old floor wax hung heavy in the room like a wet blanket.
Marcus looked different. He had lost weight—enough that his collar looked loose around his neck, the knot of his silk tie slightly crooked as if he’d tied it himself in the rearview mirror of his sedan without a mirror. He wouldn't look at me when I walked in with Eleanor, choosing instead to stare fixedly at the dark mahogany grain of the judge’s bench where three green blotters sat side by side.
“Mrs. Vance,” the judge said, an older woman with iron-gray hair pulled back into a tight bun that looked like it could stop a bullet. “We have a proposed property transfer agreement signed by both parties’ counsel regarding the primary residence on Elm Street and the associated joint accounts.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Eleanor said, standing up with a rustle of heavy paper. “My client is willing to waive spousal support for the next twelve months in exchange for immediate, unencumbered title to the property and the sole liquidation rights to the joint savings accounts currently held at Chesapeake National.”
Marcus’s lawyer—a tall, expensive-looking man with silver hair and cufflinks shaped like miniature golf clubs—stood up immediately. “Your Honor, my client wishes to reserve the right to contest the asset distribution once the full scope of—”
“Mr. Henderson,” the judge interrupted, her voice dropping into a dry, flat register that sounded like a guillotine blade hitting the sawdust. “Your client signed this agreement at nine o'clock this morning in your office. Unless Mr. Vance wishes to commit perjury regarding his signature on the public record, I suggest you sit down and let me sign the damn paper.”
Henderson sat down. He didn't look at Marcus; he simply gathered his black leather portfolio with a sharp zip of the brass teeth and slid two inches away from him on the wooden bench.
Marcus turned his head then. His eyes met mine across the four feet of empty space between our tables.
There was no anger in his face now. No panic. Just a strange, flat bewilderment—the look of a man who has dropped a very expensive porcelain vase on a stone floor and is waiting for the pieces to reassemble themselves by magic.
“Sim,” he mouthed silently, his lips moving without sound against the dry air of the courtroom. Sim, please.
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I didn't blink. I didn't turn away. I simply reached into my purse, pulled out a small, flat silver box—the Omega watch box I had picked up off the hotel carpet on Friday morning—and set it gently on the corner of the oak table between us.
The lid was closed. The gold ribbon was gone. But when the clerk called the next case and the gavel came down with a sharp, final crack that made the water glasses on the judge’s desk ring like church bells, Marcus didn't reach for it. He just sat there with his hands flat on his knees, staring at the little silver box until the bailiff told us the room was cleared for the afternoon session.
