JUDGE PETERSON TOOK HIS seat at the raised bench and nodded to his clerk. She slammed the wooden gavel three times and announced, “Case number 13 P 6268, In re: the Guardianship of Lena Woodward. Cause on trial.”
“Are both sides answering ready for trial?” Judge Peterson said.
Shirley snapped to his feet. “Petitioner is ready, Your Honor.”
“Is respondent ready?”
Catherine stood and looked nervously around the courtroom. She looked at her watch. She looked at the door. “Respondent renews her motion for a short continuance.”
“Denied. Is respondent ready for trial?”
“Very shortly, Your Honor. Can we start tomorrow?”
“No.”
“This afternoon?”
“No.”
Catherine reluctantly nodded. “Then respondent is ready.” Catherine kept turning her head to check the door. Liam had promised he’d get there before the trial started, but he’d had a stop to make. He’d told her to stall.
“Your Honor,” Catherine said. “Before we commence testimony this morning, we’ve received an offer from the petitioner which we would like to discuss. May we have a one-hour break to negotiate?”
“No. Discussions are over. You’ve had months to do your negotiations. Mr. Shirley, call your first witness.”
Catherine remained standing. “Your Honor, may I have a short break to use the ladies’ room. As you can see, I’m very pregnant.” She smiled.
Peterson sighed loudly. “Five minutes. And then we’re starting.”
Lena leaned over and whispered, “Catherine, what’s going on?”
“You’ll find out. I hope.”
Ten minutes later, Catherine returned to the courtroom and took her seat. Still no Liam. Judge Peterson said, “Finally. Mr. Shirley, call your first witness.”
“Petitioner calls Mr. Arthur Woodward to the stand.”
Arthur stood, looked at Catherine and Lena, shook his head, and walked to the witness stand. He swore to tell the truth and sat straight and confident. Shirley led him through a brief history of his childhood and his relationship with his mother and father. Then, after fifteen minutes, he got to the heart of the matter.
“It all began four years ago,” Arthur said. “She started having these visions of someone named Karolina. I’d never heard about her before. My mother would cry. She’d tell my father that Karolina’s babies are gone, someone needs to find them. She kept saying, ‘I need to go to Poland and find Karolina’s babies.’ Babies, Your Honor, who would now be in their seventies, if they were still alive and if they ever existed. But she still calls them babies.”
Arthur continued. “After my father died, it became all-consuming. She’d sit in front of the cocktail table with maps of Poland spread out everywhere. Travel brochures. Train schedules. She’d send away for information on train travel in the 1940s. She had shelves and shelves filled with GPS photos of farmland and railroad tracks. She didn’t seem to want to do anything but focus on this obsession.”
Lena’s eyes were tearing and she sat with her handkerchief, dabbing her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she mumbled.
“I’d come over at night to see my mother and she’d be staring at her computer, trying to find out about people in little cities in Poland and Germany. She searched online archives and printed out small-town European newspaper clippings from the late forties. I’d tell her to give up on it. Move on. We’d have shouting matches where she’d tell me to mind my own business. I’d tell her, ‘This is my business. Do you know how ridiculous you are, looking at a computer to find people who don’t exist, who don’t—”
“Stop!” Lena shouted, jumping to her feet and banging her fist on the table. “Stop this hearing! Stop it right now! I concede. Give him whatever he wants. I’ll hear no more of this.”
Catherine stood, put her hands on Lena’s shoulders and tried to calm her. “Don’t do this, Lena,” she whispered. “Let’s be patient. Liam told us to wait. Besides, we didn’t get the chance to tell our side of the story yet. If it comes down to it, I think I can win this hearing.”
“It’s over, Catherine. I can’t fight anymore. I can’t endure this and I won’t testify. I will not get on that witness stand.”
“Your Honor, may we have a short recess? As you can see, my client is very upset.”
“Request denied. Does Mrs. Woodward wish to admit the allegations of the petition? Does she now agree to judgment in favor of the petitioner?”
“She does not!” yelled Liam from the back of the courtroom. “Lena, don’t say another word. Catherine, I need to see you immediately.”
Catherine turned to the judge. “I’m very sorry, Your Honor, but my investigator has just arrived with information that will bear on the balance of this trial. I need a few minutes, please.”
Judge Peterson shook his head. “There’s a witness on the stand. Your client has just confessed judgment on the pleadings…”
“Your Honor, just a quick moment, please? Let the record show that you were fair. If my investigator has nothing, then I won’t stand in Lena’s way and the case will be over. But I have the feeling that Mr. Taggart has brought us very important information that will change the course of this hearing.”
“I most strenuously object,” Shirley said.
“I weary of all this drama, Ms. Lockhart,” Judge Peterson said. “It better be good. The court will allow you a fifteen-minute recess.”
Liam turned and left the courtroom.
“What the hell is this all about?” Arthur said. “Another showboat tactic, Ms. Lockhart? Putting off the inevitable? You heard my mother. She concedes.”
Catherine leaned over and whispered, “Lena, come with me.”
Tears rolled out of Lena’s eyes and dropped onto the courtroom table. She shook her head. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Not yet. Come with me.”
Catherine handed Lena her cane and helped her to her feet. They slowly walked toward the courtroom door.
“Fifteen minutes,” Arthur yelled. “After that, I’m calling the shots. No more Lockhart. No more Karolina.”
Lena and Catherine walked into the hall and toward Liam, who stood by the windows with two women. Catherine looked at them and smiled broadly. The women were tall, poised and stylishly dressed. They smiled warmly at Lena.
“Come on, Lena,” Catherine said, prodding her forward. But Lena stood still and wouldn’t move. Liam brought the two women across the hall and directly to Lena. “I’d like to introduce you to Sofia Stachiewicz and Aniela Lersky,” he said, “otherwise known to you as Rachel and Leah.”
Lena’s face flushed, her mouth quivered, her hands shook. Catherine put her arm around her shoulders to steady her. Lena looked into Catherine’s eyes.
“Karolina,” Lena said softly. “They’re her twins.”
“No,” Catherine said with a gentle smile. “Tell them the truth, Lena. It’s all right.”
She took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. They already know.”
Lena broke into sobs as she reached out for her babies. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? You gave us our lives,” Sofia said. “However you did it, you had the courage to save both of our lives. Thank you. Mother.”
They stood together, the three of them, warmly embracing each other for several minutes.
With her arms wrapped around Aniela, Lena said, “The last moment I held you, you had a twinkle in your eye and you smiled at me. I’ve held that smile in my eyes every day since 1943. You still have the same smile.”
Liam whispered to Catherine, “Sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Their plane was late.”
“We have so much to tell you,” Aniela said. “All about our lives. Liam has arranged for us to stay for the entire week.”
“We want to know all about our mother and father,” Sofia added.
“Oh, I wish you had known your father,” Lena said. “David was a wonderful man and he would have loved to know you. If I had been stronger, maybe I’d have found you years ago and you would have known him. But I wasn’t. I do have many pictures to show you.”
Shirley pushed the courtroom door open, poked his head out and said, “The judge is back, Ms. Lockhart.”
The five walked into the courtroom and straight up to the bench.
“Your Honor, I would like to introduce Mrs. Woodward’s twin daughters, who have just arrived from Europe.”
“What?” Arthur said, jumping to his feet. “It’s true? This crazy story? There really are twins? And they’re not Karolina’s? You’re telling me these are my sisters?”
Lena nodded tearfully. A satisfied smile was on her face. “You are all the children of David and Lena Woodward. Arthur, I’m sorry to have deceived you. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you or your father. That’s my fault. But these lovely women are your blood sisters.”
Arthur looked sharply at Shirley. “You told me you had the evidence. You told me you could prove that my mother was delusional. There was no doubt. What about Dr. Sullivan, the expert who was coming to court to give his opinion that my mother suffered from an obsessive delusion brought about by dementia?”
Shirley flippantly sat tapping his pen on his notepad. “The best opinion money can buy.”
Arthur turned to face his mother. “I can’t believe this. This is a shock.”
“Do you want to wait for the DNA?” Liam said.
Arthur shook his head. “No. There’s no point.” He looked at his lawyer with disgust and then back at Lena. “What is there to say? If it makes any difference, I always thought…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lena said. “It doesn’t matter what you always thought, or what you did. It doesn’t matter, because you’re my son and I will always love you.”
Arthur picked up his briefcase, put on his coat and said, “Dismiss the case, Mike.”
“But, Arthur,” Shirley responded, “she won’t take the stand. She’s afraid to testify. I can win this case in my sleep.”
“Dismiss it.” He started walking toward the door when Lena said, “Don’t you want to meet your sisters?”
He stopped, thought for a minute, and said, “Are you sure they want to meet me?”
Lena nodded. “Come and meet your sisters. They’ve traveled a long way.”
As the Woodward children shook hands and greeted each other for the first time, Liam turned to Catherine and elbowed her. “Chokes me all up.”
“How did you ever find them both?”
“I found Sofia. I had an address in Warsaw. I had no clue about Aniela. When I met with Sofia, she told me that she and Aniela have known they were sisters for more than forty years. They’re very close.”
“How did they know?”
“Each of their parents told them they were adopted from the St. Stanislaus orphanage. The nuns in the 1970s all knew the story about the two babies that were found by the railroad tracks, wrapped up and thrown off a train during the war. The nuns knew they were twins when they were brought in, but they fudged the information on the IDs. When Sofia came to St. Stanislaus to inquire about her adoption, the nuns put her in touch with Aniela. When I found Sofia and told her all about Lena, she said, ‘Oh, you need to meet my sister. She lives in Paris.’ We flew there together. As I’m sure they’ll tell you, both of them have had extraordinary careers. Sofia is a pediatrician. Aniela is a publisher of a French fashion magazine. They were so eager to come to Chicago to meet their mother and defend her in this lawsuit. They dropped everything and flew out last night.”
Judge Peterson, who had been leaning back and watching the whole scene, said, “Mr. Shirley? Are you moving to dismiss?”
“I guess so. That’s what my client wants.”
Judge Peterson slammed his gavel. “So ordered.”