Shatter My Rock (21 page)

Zoe’s
gaze dances from the prosecution table to the jury box. “What about Owen?”

“First
of all, his due date didn’t add up. Based on the embryo transfer, he should’ve
been due August 15th. But when our doctor did the ultrasound, she came up with
a due date of September 5th, which coincided with a conception date around the
time of the Cincinnati trip.”

“So
you and your husband had been undergoing fertility treatments, in an effort to
conceive?”

“That’s
right,” I say with a little gulp. “We’re both carriers of Dukate Disease, so we
had the embryos genetically screened. Dukate is fatal, and we didn’t want our
baby to die.”

But
he did,
I remind myself needlessly,
at your hand.

“What
else about Owen convinced you that Eric Blair was his biological father?”

“The
blood test,” I say flatly. “I knew he couldn’t be type AB and be mine and
Tim’s.”

“Anything
else?”

I
blink a few times, consider that the next words out of my mouth will be my
undoing.
Owen had Dukate Disease,
I say in my mind, trying the words out
there before anywhere else.

“Your
Honor, I’m sorry,” Charlotte Tupper abruptly interrupts. “But I’m not feeling
well. I’m afraid I’m going to have to...” She winces and sucks in a breath.
“I’m going to have to excuse myself.”

The
courtroom dissolves into disorder as I sit suspended in the witness chair, a
full confession pressing at the backs of my teeth. In what seems an impossibly
short span of time, the medics arrive and hoist the prosecutor onto a
stretcher, then wheel her away.

And
all I am left to do is weep.

Tim
must have taken me at my word when we last spoke, moved on enough that I have
drifted into his rearview, or, at least, his blind spot.

I
am surprised by his voice when he picks up the phone, numerous calls I’ve made
having gone unanswered. “Hello?” he says in a quasi-upbeat tone.

Tick-tock,
I think.
The
countdown begins.

I
launch right into it, for fear I won’t cross the finish line before that automated
voice kicks in and cuts me short. “I should’ve told you,” I say without any
sort of greeting, “about Eric Blair.”

I
hear Tim breathing in soft, rhythmic bursts but nothing else.

“He
raped me.” These words stick in my throat, no matter how many times I utter
them. “I didn’t know until after Owen was born.”

Still,
there is no reply, so I explain further. “In Cincinnati, he drugged me. It was
right after the embryo transfer, so…”

“Owen
was his?” Tim whispers, in a pensive, disbelieving way that makes clear he
expects no answer.

Illogically,
I nod. “There’s more.”

He
turns harsh with me. “Like what?”

I
kick my toes against the cinderblock wall, forget to care if the correctional
officers notice. “Owen had Dukate Disease.”

“No,
he didn’t. You know how fuckin’ impossible…?”

I
persist. “He did. Why would I…?”

“Yeah.
Right.” Tim clicks his tongue, lets loose a
tsk
sound that tells me:
You
have some nerve, Claire. Some fuckin’ nerve.
“This is stupid. Why are we
even talking about this?”

He
can resist all he wants, but I’m not letting him off the hook this time, his
denial even more toxic than my own. “Those ‘muscle spasms’?” I say. “Those were
myoclonic jerks. Ricky had them for years, so I should know.”

“If
that’s true,” he challenges, “how come you didn’t do anything about it? You did
absolutely nothing
to help him.”

I
gulp hard, shake my head. “You’re wrong,” I say, more to the accusing voice in
my head than to anything my husband has said. “I did the only thing I could. The
only thing that would give him peace.”

What
I’ve admitted takes a while to sink in with Tim, moments I spend holding my
breath and praying. “This is
so
goddamn messed up,” he wails. “There
ain’t a reason on earth why… He was a
baby,
for Christ’s sake.”

I
am powerless to ease his pain. “I know.”

A
series of muffled thuds on Tim’s end of the line suggests he may be punishing
the drywall. I think about telling him to stop but don’t. In a distraught
whimper, he finally asks, “He raped you?” And that’s when I realize he is on
the verge of sobbing.

“It’s
okay,” I say, even though nothing ever will be again. “It’s over.”

Charlotte
Tupper’s false labor pushes the rest of my testimony to the following day. To
refresh the court’s memory, Zoe asks the stenographer to read back our last
exchange. Then she says, “Is there anything else that led you to believe Eric
Blair was Owen’s biological father?”

Ready
or not,
I
tell myself. “Owen had Dukate Disease.”

Zoe’s
eyes perk with curiosity—and confusion. This is not part of the story we’ve
rehearsed. “Dukate Disease?”

“That’s
how I knew he wasn’t Tim’s,” I say. “Because the embryos had been screened. And
Tim had had a vasectomy twelve or thirteen years earlier. There was no way we
could’ve borne a child with Dukate Disease.”

“How
did you discover that Owen had Dukate Disease?” Zoe asks warily.

For
this part, I turn toward the jury, rest my gaze on the shiny pearl buttons of a
woman’s soft, pink blouse. “My brother, Ricky, had Dukate,” I explain. “I took
care of him for most of his life, until he died in nineteen seventy-nine, when
he was nine years old.”

“And
this familiarized you with the signs of Dukate Disease?” Zoe intuits.

I
agree with a nod. “You don’t forget watching someone you love disintegrate like
that: the seizures, the blindness, the dementia. The last few years of his
life, he just wanted it to end, wanted to be done with it.”

I
turn back to Zoe, my mouth parched and my guts bubbling with nausea. She eyes
me for a moment. “So you recognized something in Owen? Something you remembered
seeing in your brother, Ricky?”

I
try to swallow, but my throat just sticks and unsticks like a dried-out wad of
gum. “The ‘muscle spasms,’” I say. “Ricky had them too. They’re called
myoclonic jerks.”

“When
you noticed these ‘muscle spasms,’ these ‘myoclonic jerks’ in Owen, what did
that mean to you?”

My
eyes suddenly well, three decades of tears aching to spill. But I push them back.
“My baby was going to die.” I sniffle. “And he was going to suffer.”

Zoe
shoots a look at the prosecutor, who, over the last bits of my testimony,
should be preparing an objection. Then again, perhaps she is granting me the
rope with which to hang myself. “Did you tell your husband, Tim, that you
believed Owen had Dukate Disease?”

“I
couldn’t.”

“Because…?”

“Then
he’d have known the baby wasn’t his,” I say, “and it wouldn’t have helped Owen
anyway.”

“Did
you love your baby, Mrs. Fowler?” Zoe asks in a terse tone.

This
time, the tears win. “I loved him,” I whimper. “I did. But I couldn’t… No
matter what…”

Judge
Parsons presses a box of tissues into my blurry view and motions at a water
pitcher. “Take a breath, Mrs. Fowler. Try to calm down.”

With
shaking hands, I dribble a stream of water into a plastic cup until it is just
short of half full. Then I heed the judge’s advice, draw a few even breaths
followed by a few deliberate sips.

When
I have recovered, Zoe shifts her gaze from my tear-stained face to the jury
box, where she seems to be weighing her chances of success—and mine. I remain
as composed as possible while she leads me through our version of the events of
May 28, 2011 with carefully composed questions that require me to utter only a syllable
here and there in reply. Finally, she wraps up the questioning, tells the
judge, “I have nothing further, Your Honor.” But I am not yet free to go.

I
have managed to hold back the last shard of damning evidence, bite my tongue at
the crucial moments and preserve the truth of Owen’s demise. But Charlotte Tupper
is not so easily deterred. “Good day, Mrs. Fowler,” she begins, a hint of
sarcasm underlying her otherwise congenial tone. “I’d like to clarify some
aspects of your testimony, if you don’t mind.”

I
give her an obligatory nod.

“You
told this court that you believe Eric Blair raped you, correct?”

“Yes,”
I say. “That’s right.”

“But
isn’t it true that, on the night in question, you were the one who invited Mr.
Blair to your hotel room?”

“No,”
I say with a vigorous shake of my head. “Absolutely not.”

Ms.
Tupper backs up a few steps, slides a sheet of paper off the prosecution table
and introduces it into evidence. “Let me refresh your memory,” she says, as she
passes the paper to me. About a third of the way down the page, there is a highlighted
line. “Do you recognize the number associated with this cell phone account? The
one that ends in -6497?”

I
shrug. “Yeah. It’s mine.”

“And
directing your attention to the calls placed from your phone on December 15,
2009, do you recognize the highlighted number ending in -0275, which was dialed
at 11:55 p.m.?”

The
Rhode Island number she refers to has the same area code and exchange as mine.
“I’ve never seen that before.”

“Would
it surprise you to know that that number is Eric Blair’s cell phone number, and
it was dialed from your cell phone the night you claim he raped you?”

I
stare at the mash of numbers and dates. “Not really.”

She
raises an eyebrow, smiles as if she’s caught me. “Why not?”

“He’s
sick. He must have made the call himself, while I was passed out.”

Her
shoulders slump. She changes direction. “Mrs. Fowler, you claim that your son,
baby Owen, was stricken with a fatal illness called Dukate Disease, correct?”

My
face twitches. “Correct.”

“Yet
there is nothing in his medical records to verify such a diagnosis, correct?”

“Correct,”
I say again.

“So
we’re just supposed to take your word for it?”

“He
had it,” I say. “The myoclonic jerks…” I push away the image of Owen
convulsing. “They were getting worse. It was only a matter of time before…”

“If
your son was so ill,” the prosecutor asks, her hands perched on her belly, “why
didn’t you seek medical care for him?”

The
answer to this question is ugly. Incriminating. “It wouldn’t have helped.”

“And
who decided that?”

I
murmur, “I did.”

“So
you were just going to let him suffer?”

My
lungs feel frozen, as if I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. “I don’t know. I
was afraid.”

Ms.
Tupper snorts softly. “Oh,
you
were afraid? Don’t you think your baby
was afraid? Don’t you think…?”

Zoe
bolts to her feet. “Objection! Badgering!”

Judge
Parsons shakes his head. “Sustained.”

“How
much alcohol did you have to drink on the night of May 27, 2011?”

“Enough,”
I say. “More than enough.”

“Any
particular reason you were drinking so heavily?”

Maybe
she’s right,
I
think.
Maybe I was dulling the pain of what I was about to do.
“No.”

“Just
having a good time?”

“You
could say that, I guess,” I agree with a shrug.

“So
much of a good time that you’re not sure if you passed out, rolled on top of
your baby and suffocated him, then ‘accidentally’ slipped and tossed him
overboard?”

I
pinch my eyes shut. My mind hurtles back to the moment I held Owen’s lifeless
face to mine, sprinkled kisses over his pudgy, bruised cheeks, left the prints
of my tears on his cooling skin, grazed my thumb along his purple-blue lips one
last time, if only to steel my resolve and finally let him go. “I don’t know
what you’re…” I mumble, without the decency of opening my eyes.

Judge
Parsons’ rasp of a voice impatiently interrupts, “Are you fit to proceed, Mrs.
Fowler?”

I
lick my lips and nod, open my eyes and lock them with the prosecutor’s. “Go
ahead.”

“Isn’t
it true that you had an affair with Eric Blair and asked him to impregnate
you?”

“No.”

“Isn’t
it true that you hid your pregnancy from your husband, Tim, for months?”

“I
was…waiting for the right time,” I say.

“Isn’t
it true that, once Owen was born, you found him to be an inconvenience and
wanted to be rid of him?”

“No,
it’s not. I loved him. I
love
him.”

“Isn’t
it true that, even though you claim Owen had a terminal illness, you failed to
get him proper medical care?”

“It
wouldn’t have done any good,” I repeat.

“Isn’t
it true that, on the night of May 27, 2011, you got yourself good and liquored
up so you’d have the nerve to kill your baby, like you’d planned?”

“I
hadn’t planned anything,” I mutter. “The trip was Jenna’s idea. I just…”

“And
isn’t it true,” the prosecutor demands, her voice barreling toward its peak,
“that in the wee hours of May 28, 2011, while everyone else on that boat was
asleep, you crept out of bed, snatched baby Owen from his basket and spirited
him above board, where you used a deck pillow—a weapon of convenience,
perhaps—to snuff the life out of your son? Isn’t
that
the truth, Mrs.
Fowler?”

The
courtroom quiets to the proverbial pin-drop level, and every eye trains on me.
I sense Zoe—and Rudy and Paul behind her—pulling for me, willing me to deny
such a theory and be done with it, leave the jurors some doubt to which they
may cling.

But
on the other side of the courtroom, the side charged with exacting justice for Owen,
I tune in to an undercurrent of pain and love, the embodiment of all that is
bitter and sweet. The State aims to punish me not for reasons arbitrary and
capricious, I reckon, but in protection of my sweet, gentle boy. To honor his
innocent soul.

I
move my gaze from the floor to the defense table and then to Zoe’s eyes.
I’m
sorry,
I mouth, the words suffocating before they reach my lips.

When
I glance back at the prosecutor, I find the same spark of empathy and
understanding she displayed the first time we met, in that bare interview room
long ago. She smiles, and I know I will tell her everything. And so I do.

In
her closing argument, Charlotte Tupper told the jurors that my motive for
killing Owen, while relevant to their understanding of the case, was
ir
relevant
in that it could not be used as a determinant of my guilt or innocence.

Irrelevant.
She
must have repeated that word ten times, but it still didn’t sit well with me.
In my view, the
only
relevant thing was the why.

But
Charlotte Tupper said, “If a man holds up a bank to feed his family, is he not
still a bank robber?” And, by extension,
If a woman kills her child out of
mercy, is she not still a murderer?
The prosecutor never uttered these
words, but they rang over and over through my mind nonetheless.

Am
I a murderer?

The
jurors were able to come to some agreement in the matter, finding me guilty of
the lesser-included charge of voluntary manslaughter. From all other charges,
they set me free.