The Lake House Read online

  She called out now, her voice shrill with fear, “Frannie. Kit. I need you. Ple-e-e-e-e-ase. Where are you guys?”

  Her piercing cry was still hanging in the air as more cars pulled up to the courthouse.

  Burly men with buzz cuts leaped out onto the street. Several cars began discharging the other kids. They were so hesitant, so young and vulnerable. They shied away from the cameras, hid their darling little faces.

  “Spawn of the devil!” someone screeched. “These children are demons!”

  4

  COURTROOM 19 was on the sixth floor. It was the largest room in the complex by far and would have to be, to hold so many inquiring minds. As Kit and I approached with our attorney, we were besieged by a throng of reporters. “Put your head down,” our lawyer advised, “and just keep walking.”

  “Agent Brennan, look over here. Dr. O’Neill. Hey, Frannie! What makes you think you’re a competent mother?” one of the press vultures shouted.

  “What makes either of you think you can be good parents to these children?”

  Kit finally looked up at the reporter. “Because we love the little creeps,” he said, and winked. “And because they love us. Life’s simple like that.”

  A couple of armed guards swung open the set of double doors to the courtroom, and we disappeared inside. If the brouhaha on the street had sounded like a hurricane in motion, the inside had the intensity of swarming bees. The room was paneled in golden oak, and the gallery at the rear was furnished with matching benches that held over two hundred spectators.

  Every available space was filled with family members, scientists, and members of the press with real clout and, hopefully, better manners than those of the terrible horde outside.

  Our lawyers and those representing the biological parents had gathered in small groups around the bar. The lawyers’ tables were situated in the middle of the room. Up front was the judge’s bench, and it was vacant.

  Our lawyer, Jeffrey Kussof, had told us that Colorado courts almost always rule in the “best interest of the child.” I was holding on to that statement as tightly as I clasped Kit’s hand when the door from the judge’s chambers opened.

  What I saw next kind of took my breath away. I suspect that it did the same thing to everybody else in Courtroom 19.

  Eyes front, wings folded, the six children filed into the room wearing their tailored suits and starched little smocks. They were eye-poppers, for sure. Dazzlers.

  First came the four-year-old twins, Peter and Wendy. They were dark-haired, of Chinese descent, their snowy wing feathers glinting with dark blue tips.

  Max’s little brother, Matthew, an unruly towhead of nine, came next.

  He was followed by the two handsome older boys, Icarus and Ozymandias.

  And bringing up the rear was the lovely firstborn herself.

  Maximum.

  The crowd, as they say on the sports pages, went wild.

  5

  A COUPLE OF PACES behind the six children strode Judge James Randolph Dwyer, a large, fit man of seventy-three. He had a face like a crumpled paper bag, wispy white hair, and a no-nonsense set to his jaw.

  There was a loud whooshing sound as everyone in the courtroom sat down.

  While the bailiff called the court to order and then read from the docket, I was keenly aware of the people across the aisle from us. They were the biological parents, and they had assembled a formidable legal team of attorneys headed by Catherine Fitzgibbons, a former prosecutor known for her aggressive parry-and-thrust style and impressive winning record. I suppose it didn’t hurt their case that she was married and pregnant with her fourth child.

  “Your Honor,” said Jeffrey Kussof, our lawyer, “I am quite certain this case will stretch the heartstrings of all concerned. There are no bad people here.

  “The real conflict is about what is in the best interest of the children. We will prove that their best interests clearly lie with Dr. O’Neill and Mr. Brennan.

  “I’d like to quote Marianne O. Battani, judge of Wayne County Circuit Court, Detroit. In 1986 she said of a test-tube baby case, ‘We really have no definition of mother in our law books. Mother was believed to have been so basic that no definition was deemed necessary.’ Your Honor, all that has changed. Today, in our complex and sometimes confusing world, a child can have as many as three mothers. The one who conceived the child, the one who bore the child, and the one who raised him.

  “Agent Brennan and Dr. O’Neill have been surrogate parents under extreme fire. They actually put their lives on the line for these children. I’ll repeat that—they put their lives at risk.

  “They never thought of anything but the children’s safety. Dr. O’Neill lost her animal hospital and her home in the process. To take blows and bullets for others shows love as fierce as any natural maternity or paternity.

  “That said, this case isn’t about my clients or about the respondents. It’s about the children and the Colorado law that mandates children be united with their families. There is a new kind of family here, a family that came together through terrible adversity. And this powerful, loving family, for the good of the children, must be kept together. To separate Kit, Frannie, Max, Ic, Oz, Matthew, Wendy, and Peter would be an injustice to everyone involved. It would be exceedingly cruel.”

  I wanted to hug Jeffrey Kussof, and he did look mildly pleased with himself as he sat down. “It’s a start,” he whispered.

  But Catherine Fitzgibbons was already on her feet.

  6

  “I’M HERE TODAY to represent the rights of six American citizens—Max, Matthew, Oz, Icarus, Wendy, and Peter,” said attorney Fitzgibbons, “as well as their true parents.”

  “Why am I always the last one?” little Peter suddenly spoke up from his seat in the second row. Everybody in the room laughed at the unexpected interruption from the small boy.

  “No offense meant,” Catherine Fitzgibbons said, but she had turned the brightest red. Her face seemed to float like a balloon above the tailored navy blue field of her maternity dress. “Okay then—Peter, et al., I’m here to represent all of you,” she said, and smiled benevolently.

  “I sincerely doubt it,” Icarus, who has been blind since birth, piped up. “You don’t know us. As blind as I am, even I can see that.”

  Once again, the room was moved to laughter and small talk, quieting only after Judge Dwyer’s repeated gavel banging and threats to clear the room. The kids finally settled down somewhat. They were all quick with a quip, though, probably because each of the six had a genius IQ. They tested off the charts—Stanford-Binet, WPPSI-R, WISC-III.

  In her opening remarks, Fitzgibbons went on to laud Kit and me for what she called our “heroic rescue” as a way of acknowledging our help in the past and putting it completely to rest. Then she began to make her critical points against us. Each was like a knife driven into my heart and Kit’s and, I was quite certain, the children’s.

  “Your Honor, Dr. O’Neill and Mr. Brennan, for all their altruism on the part of these children, have no legitimate claim in this courtroom,” she pronounced. “None.

  “They are unmarried. They’ve known each other and the children for only a matter of months. Furthermore, and this hardly can be said strongly enough, the children’s parents have done nothing whatsoever to forfeit their parental rights. On the contrary, we will show cause to irrevocably declare them the lawful, legitimate, and exclusive parents of their children once and for all.”

  When Fitzgibbons had finished her opening remarks, Jeffrey Kussof stood up immediately and called Kit. I watched with pride, and love, as he took the stand.

  Jeffrey cited Kit’s law degree from NYU and his twelve years as an FBI agent. And he gently elicited the personal tragedy that was like a dark hole at the center of Kit’s life. Four years ago, while he was working on a case, his wife and two small boys had left for a Nantucket vacation without Kit. Their small airplane went down, and there were no survivors.

  Kit testified calmly ye
t passionately, and with a spark of humor and the wit that defines his personality. I thought anyone seeing him for the first time would be entirely convinced that not just was he a brave man but he had been, and would be again, an unimpeachably good father.

  Then, for two unrelenting hours, Catherine Fitzgibbons expertly filleted Kit’s career—and just about every moment of his private life.

  7

  “KIT ISN’T YOUR given name, is it?” she asked.

  “No, actually it’s Thomas. Thomas Brennan. Kit is a nickname. Frannie and the kids call me Kit. It’s a long story.”

  “Mr. Brennan, you’ve been with the FBI for twelve years?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you ever heard of Fox Mulder?”

  Kit snorted and shook his head. He knew where this was going already. “That’s very cute.”

  “Please instruct the witness to answer, Your Honor,” said Fitzgibbons.

  “Mr. Brennan, please respond to the question.”

  “Fox Mulder is a fictitious character on a television series,” said Kit.

  “Do you have an opinion of this fictitious character?”

  “Yeah. He’s a frickin’ nutjob.”

  The spectators laughed. So did I. And the children twittered with delight. They adored Kit.

  “Have you any idea, Mr. Brennan, why your colleagues at the FBI call you ‘Mulder’?” asked Fitzgibbons.

  “Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative. Move to strike,” shouted Jeffrey Kussof.

  Fitzgibbons bowed her head as if to show she was contrite. She wasn’t, of course.

  “I retract the question. Mr. Brennan, do you consider yourself a workaholic?”

  “Maybe. At times. I’m definitely committed to my work. I even like it sometimes.”

  “And would you describe yourself as a stable person?”

  “Yes, I certainly would.”

  “But you’ve been medicated for depression.”

  Fitzgibbons turned her back on Kit when she said this. It was good to see that even she could feel some shame.

  “Yes. I was depressed, damned depressed when I lost my entire family,” Kit said, his voice rising sharply.

  Catherine Fitzgibbons turned round to face him. She held her stomach in profile to Judge Dwyer.

  “I see. So you understand, then, how the respondents must feel about losing their children.”

  Kit didn’t speak. Across from me, the twins sent up frightened, high-pitched screeches in protest of this attack on Kit.

  “Agent Brennan, shall I repeat the question?”

  “You heartless —,” he said in a whisper.

  “Permission to treat the witness as hostile, Your Honor,” said Fitzgibbons.

  “Mr. Brennan, please answer the question,” said the judge.

  “Yes. Yes, I understand how it feels to lose a child,” Kit finally answered.

  “And still you persist in this action? You say that I’m heartless? That will be all, Agent Brennan.”

  8

  I WAS FEELING SICK in the pit of my stomach when Jeffrey Kussof rose and spoke in a clear, confident voice.

  “I call Dr. Frances O’Neill.”

  I immediately wondered why Jeffrey seemed so confident. Did he know something that I didn’t? Why did he have more confidence in me than I had in myself?

  As I stepped up to the witness stand, I think I had some idea of how it felt to be a four-hundred-pound lady in a wading pool. I looked out at the gallery, and the gallery looked back at me. A little more than two hundred people staring right at me, waiting for me to convince them that I would be a great—no, a flawless—mother for six unusual and very special children.

  Well, that was what I planned to do.

  Because I knew in my heart that I would be. Wasn’t that worth something?

  Jeffrey gave me a reassuring smile, then, under his direction, I cited my academic and professional credentials: the Westinghouse Science Scholarship, my DVM from Colorado State’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Fort Collins, and all the rest of my laurels.

  This prompted a little cheer and a round of whistles from the six kids, right under the noses of their seething parents. Even the twins were laughing. I chanced a quick look over at Kit, and he gave me a wink and one of his famous crooked smiles.

  As the interview went on for well over an hour, I began to feel a little more confident. I knew I would be a great mom; I loved these kids more than anyone else could. Because I was a veterinarian, I understood how complex they were. Jeffrey asked me to speak about my own recent tragedy—my husband had been murdered in a holdup two years before. And I talked about my successful one-woman animal practice on a squiggle of dirt road in Bear Bluff, a one-traffic-light town about fifty miles northwest of Boulder.

  Jeffrey then went on to depict me as a woman with a heart as big as the Rockies, with an open door to every chipmunk and mule deer and pound puppy in Colorado. Okay, so I started to blush.

  But most important, he told about my having operated on Max when she was near death. How I had saved her life when no one else could have. That was a fact that no one could dispute, not even Ms. Fitzgibbons.

  Or so I hoped.

  So I prayed.

  A few moments later Catherine Fitzgibbons came over to the stand and smiled as sweetly as if she were my own dear sister, Carole Anne. But she didn’t waste much more of the court’s time on niceties.

  “Dr. O’Neill, what is your annual salary?” she asked in her trademark huffy tone.

  “I can’t really say. It differs from year to year. Depends on whether I’m working on more chipmunks or horses in that particular year.”

  “On average, more or less than thirty-five thousand a year.”

  “Less,” I said, more emphatically than I’d meant to.

  “And you expect to support six children —”

  “I wouldn’t do it alone! These kids need love more than money. They’re depressed now.”

  Catherine Fitzgibbons’s eyebrows arched. “You say the children are depressed. How do you know that? You aren’t a psychologist, are you?”

  “No, but —”

  Fitzgibbons cut me off. “You aren’t any kind of a people doctor, are you, Dr. O’Neill?”

  “No. But, these children are —,” I started to say, but she rudely cut me off again. I was tempted to speak right over her next question, but I stopped myself. My mistake.

  “You’ve never been a mother, have you, Dr. O’Neill? Please answer yes or no.”

  “No, but . . . No.”

  I wanted to punch Fitzgibbons, I really did. She deserved it, too.

  “You’ve been cohabiting with a man who is not your husband, is that correct?”

  “I wouldn’t say we’re cohabiting.”

  I definitely wanted to strangle her to death, then punch her lights out for good measure.

  “Correction. Okay. Have it your way, then. You’re having sex with a man not your husband?”

  Jeffrey Kussof objected to the question, and his objection was sustained.

  “Is this your idea of how to be a role model to underage children?” Fitzgibbons stayed on the attack.

  Jeffrey was up in a flash. “Objection, Your Honor. Calls for a conclusion on the part of the witness.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Dr. O’Neill, if you were to have custody of the six young children, how would you manage to both work and care for them? Have you thought about that? Would you drive them to their various schools? Or would you just open the door and let them fly?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. Counsel is badgering the witness,” said my lawyer.

  But Catherine Fitzgibbons gave him a curt, snide wave of dismissal. “I have no further questions for this witness.”

  She proudly waddled back to her seat.

  9

  JUDGE DWYER GAVE US a most special gift that night, and I hoped it didn’t come out of some combination of pity and guilt. He made a decision that the kids could sp
end part of the night with Kit and me. He kind of threw us a bone.

  What a treat! Unforgettable.

  The kids were brought to our hotel, the venerable old Brown Palace, by a phalanx of U.S. marshals. The first order of business was deciding on a place for dinner. Everyone was superstarved. The choices were room service, the Ship Tavern right there in the hotel, or the Little Italy in the Sixteenth Street Mall. Little Italy won in a landslide, six to two. Supposedly they had great veggie pizza, the kids’ all-time favorite food on the planet. Say no more.

  We arrived at the Italian restaurant about 8:30, and the usual rules were in effect: no staring contests with other people; no food fights, especially under the circumstances; absolutely no flying inside Little Italy; no snide jokes about Uncle Frank or Little Joey, who were pictured all over the walls.

  The kids were a dream to be with that night. Part of it was because they were on their best behavior, but part was because they were so smart and were growing up so fast. Max was twelve, but in human years she was probably twice that. She was even starting to look like a young woman in her mid-teens. And then there was Ozymandias, who was more handsome than Prince Harry on a good hair day.

  This was the first time they had all been together to talk and “vent” about their new parents.

  Ozymandias started off by saying that his mom was a “really good, really sweet person,” but she just didn’t get the bird part of him and kept suggesting that he would “grow out of it.” He also revealed to us that his mother had engaged an agent and an entertainment lawyer because “we don’t want to be taken advantage of by Hollywood types, do we?”

  “I like her, you know,” he said, “but she really isn’t equipped to handle me. The press are always sniffing around the house, and she thinks it’s okay. She likes the attention, I think. Not in a mean way. She’s just human.”

  All the kids had horror stories about the press constantly being at their houses, at school, just about anywhere they went. The Chens had sold interviews with Peter and Wendy; the Marshalls would have, except that Max forbade it. She had also smashed up a camera during a particularly obnoxious interview.