Caleb’s POV
The courtroom smells like old wood and recycled air. I straighten my tie for the third time as the bailiff calls my name, and my mother's eyes find mine from the second row before I've taken my first step toward the stand.
She nods once. Barely a movement, more a tremor of the chin, but I read it clearly: I'm right here.
I don't look at Simon as I cross the room. I can feel him at the defense table, persistent and unwanted, but I refuse to give him my attention.
His attorney, a wiry man named Fenton, watches me take the oath with the detached curiosity of someone appraising livestock.
"Mr. Thornton," William's lead attorney Whitfield begins, standing at a measured distance from the witness box, "can you describe your childhood living with your father, Simon Thornton?"
"I can." My voice comes out steadier than I expected, anchored by the hours Serena and I spent practicing until my throat was raw.
"My father was violent. Not occasionally, not when provoked. Regularly and deliberately, the way other fathers kept a schedule for mowing the lawn."
A murmur ripples through the gallery. I keep my eyes on my mother.
"Can you describe specific instances?"
"When I was nine, he threw a glass at my mother because dinner was cold. It shattered against the wall beside her head."
I pause, not for effect but because the image still carries weight. "When I was eleven, he slammed a door on my hand for leaving my shoes in the hallway. I told the school nurse I caught it playing basketball."
"And the scar near your left ear?"
My fingers twitch toward it before I stop myself. "I was twelve. He threw a glass at my head during dinner because I forgot to take out the trash. It shattered against the wall behind me, and one of the shards caught me on the way down. My mother drove me to the emergency room and told them I fell off my bike."
The courtroom is so quiet I can hear the court reporter's fingers pausing on the keys.
Catherine's face has gone still, her eyes bright, holding herself together through sheer will and the refusal to let Simon see her break.
"There were nights I hid in my closet while he raged downstairs," I continue. "I could hear my mother through the floor, trying to make herself small enough that his anger would pass over her."
"Mr. Thornton, you also made financial payments related to your father. Can you tell the court about that?"
"After Simon left, his debts didn't leave with him." I let the words settle. "Collectors showed up. Gambling debts, loans, money owed to people who don't send polite reminders. I was eighteen when the first one cornered me outside my dormitory."
"And what did you do?"
"I paid it. All of it." I hold Whitfield's gaze because looking anywhere else would unravel me.
"For two years, I entered illegal street races to cover debts my father racked up and never settled. Two years of risking my life for a man who never paid for anything in his."
Whitfield nods and steps back. "No further questions, Your Honor."
Fenton rises and approaches with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
"Mr. Thornton, you describe a difficult childhood. But isn't it possible you are painting an extreme picture of what was, in reality, a flawed but loving household?"
"No."
"Your father never expressed affection? Never attended a single game?"
"My father attended one lacrosse game my sophomore year." I meet Fenton's gaze without flinching.
"He was drunk by halftime and got into an argument with another parent in the parking lot. My coach asked my mother not to bring him again."
"So your position is that Simon Thornton had no redeeming qualities as a parent?"
"My position is that a man who beats his wife and throws a glass at his twelve-year-old's head doesn't get to rebrand himself as flawed." The words come out clean, placed with the precision Serena taught me. "Flawed is forgetting a birthday. What my father did was criminal."
Fenton's mouth thins. He returns to his seat with a clipped, "Nothing further."
I step down and return to my seat beside Serena. Her hand closes around mine under the bench, and the warmth of her grip is the only thing I feel.
Then my mother's name is called.
Catherine rises with the composure that only women who have survived men like Simon can manufacture. She walks to the stand with her back straight, her chin level, every step a quiet repudiation of the woman who once cowered in hallways.
"Mrs. Lakin," Whitfield begins, using her married name deliberately, "can you describe your first marriage to Simon Thornton?"
"It began the way many abusive relationships begin," my mother says. "With charm that became surveillance. He wanted to know where I was at all times, who I spoke to, what I wore. By the time the first hit came, he had already dismantled every support system I had."
"Can you tell the court about the restraining order?"
"I filed it three years ago after the final violent incident. Simon broke through the bathroom door where I had locked myself and dragged me into the hallway."
Her voice doesn't waver, but her hands tremble in her lap. "I called the police that night. He was removed from the home."
"And the divorce papers?"
"I had prepared them months earlier, but Simon threatened that any separation would mean a custody battle for our son." Catherine's eyes find mine.
"After he was removed, the unsigned papers disappeared. He took them and held them for three years, ensuring that as long as the divorce was never finalized, he maintained a legal claim on my life and my new marriage."
Fenton's cross-examination is brief, perfunctory. My mother answers each question with devastating composure, never allowing a crack wide enough for opposing counsel to exploit.
When she steps down, Simon's attorney calls his final witness.
Simon stands. He buttons his jacket and crosses to the stand with the stride of a man who believes the right performance can rewrite history.
He takes the oath and settles into the witness chair like he is sitting down to a business lunch.
"Mr. Thornton," Fenton says, "you have heard the testimony today. Do you deny the allegations of abuse?"
Simon's jaw works for a moment. Then he leans toward the microphone.
"No. I don't deny it."
The courtroom shifts. Serena's fingers tighten around mine.
"I was sick," Simon says, and his voice carries the rehearsed texture of a man who has spent months learning which words to deploy.
"I was an alcoholic, I was angry, and I failed my family in ways I will spend the rest of my life regretting. But I've gotten help. I've completed treatment. I'm a different man now."
I search the judge's face for a reaction, for the skepticism this performance deserves, for any sign that she can hear the calculation underneath the contrition.
Her expression gives me nothing.