Custody Read online

  Custody is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2001 by Nancy Thayer

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover by St. Martin’s Press in 2001.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39100-8

  Author photograph copyright © Jessica Hills Photography

  Cover design: Eileen Carey

  Cover image: © Julia Davila-Lampe/Moment Open /Getty Images

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  An Introduction from the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters

  An Introduction from the Author

  What does it mean to be a family? What would a woman surrender to achieve her deepest desire—whether that desire is personal or professional? Medical achievements, legal limitations, and our deepest human longings and emotions collide in my novel Custody, during the fight for custody of a teenage girl. Anne Madison, a respected state politician and mother, and her estranged husband, prominent physician Randall Madison, must have the fate of their daughter, Tessa, decided by Kelly MacLeod, a family court judge with a profound secret of her own. This book is has all sorts of families.

  I will always be grateful for the help of the many professionals who deal daily with complex situations like child custody: probate and family court judges, clinical social workers, and those who support the court and psychological welfare workers. How does anyone balance public service with a rich family life? I think that takes the wisdom of Solomon … and the vigor of the Energizer Bunny!

  I’m delighted that my early novels are being made available to my readers as ebooks. My style has changed slightly, as the world has grown faster, but my subject, family life, remains as mysterious and fascinating to me now as it was in these early books: falling in love, raising children, friendships and betrayals and forgiveness.

  I hope you enjoy these early novels and discover some new friends there.

  Nancy Thayer

  Custody: n.

  1. a guarding or keeping safe; care; protection; guardianship

  2. detention; imprisonment

  Webster’s New World Dictionary, College Edition, 1968

  Prologue

  September 5, 2000

  SOME DAYS, KELLY THOUGHT, ARE more important than others. Some days you wake with your heart pounding and your hopes higher than the sky. Some days you know you are exactly where you are meant to be.

  Today, the first Tuesday in September, Kelly drove, in the early morning sunshine, down Cambridge Street, feeling like a well-read traveler entering a foreign country for the first time.

  This was a day she would remember all her life. This was the day she began the work she had dreamed of, sacrificed for, and worked toward steadily and without rest for thirteen years.

  During the past month she had become slightly accustomed to wearing the black robe and accepting the deferential greeting of “Judge.” But for the past month she had been sitting on cases with other judges, moving through various courtrooms in the Commonwealth, as she went through the standard month of training that all Massachusetts Probate and Family Court judges receive before they sit alone.

  Today she would sit alone. Leaving the heavy traffic, she turned off onto Thorndike Street, entered a lot, and parked her silver Subaru in a space reserved with her name. She stepped out of her car, clicked it locked, and looked up at the stately back of the century-old, four-story, redbrick courthouse.

  Here she would render justice. Here she would listen to, evaluate, and then—using all her wisdom, knowledge, logic, and fierce intellectual skill—decide, entirely by herself, the fates of the people who stood before her.

  She was only thirty-five years old, but she was competent. She was ready. She knew, better than anyone else, how hard she had worked for this.

  With her own key, she let herself in through the back entrance of the courthouse. Inside, she nodded at the security guard as she shouldered through the throngs crowding the central lobby and side halls. So early in the morning, the noise of whispers and coughs, shoes clicking across corridors, briefcases snapping shut swirled up through the balconied floors toward the blue and gold dome. Too impatient for the ancient elevator, Kelly hurried up the smooth, wide steps, their marble worn into silky troughs. The crowded hallways buzzed with whispered consultations, arguments, greetings and laughter, filling her with a calm exultation as she hurried to her chambers.

  Her chambers!

  Printed in gold on the glass door were the words:

  JUDGE KELLY MACLEOD

  PRIVATE

  DO NOT ENTER

  With a shiver of anticipation and a blissful sense of entitlement, she opened the door. She entered.

  “Good morning, Judge.” Her secretary, an Asian woman in a plaid suit, was already at her desk, up to her elbows in cases and folders.

  “Good morning, Luanne.”

  “Good morning, Judge.”

  Kelly smiled at the court officer, a tall, bald, stately African-American, in his navy blue uniform. “Good morning, Ed.”

  “Good morning, Judge.” Dignified in her beige silk suit and pearls, Sally Beale, Kelly’s clerk, was the key to a smooth transition into this court. Sally had been here for a dozen years. Sally knew everything.

  “Great suit,” Kelly told her.

  “Thank you, Judge.” She was reserved, treating Kelly with respect, and Kelly was grateful. Sally had known Kelly as a law student, a fledgling lawyer, a pro bono activist, and a judicial applicant. If anyone had an idea of how far Kelly had come, it was Sally.

  “What have we got today?” Kelly asked, looking toward the door to the courtroom. That door was all that stood between this place of quiet and the storm of human lives.

  Sally handed her the trial list. “First, a quick and easy divorce. Then a child custody case. That won’t be short, and it won’t be sweet.”

  “Then we’d better begin.”

  “Right. See you out there.” Sally slid through the door into the churning whispers of the courtroom.

  Kelly took her black robe off the hanger, pulled it on over her gray pantsuit, adjusted the shoulders and collar. Some of the older women judges wore beautiful scarves at the neckline, but Kelly wanted to keep her image severe for now. Quickly she scann
ed her reflection in the mirror hanging on the closet door. She’d subdued her blond hair in a twist at the back of her head, and not a hair had dared escape. Fine. She looked fine. No reason to hesitate. She nodded to Officer Harris.

  He asked, “Ready, Judge?”

  “Ready.”

  He opened the door.

  Kelly walked into the courtroom.

  Her courtroom.

  She’d been in this room before, many times, as a lawyer representing one side or another in a divorce or child custody case. The enormous room was brightened by many windows, its walls painted a peaceful pale blue trimmed with cream. The ceilings were perhaps twenty feet high. The wood of the railings, witness stand, conference tables, clerk’s and judge’s bar, officer of the court’s station, was golden oak, darkened by the years, glowing with the patina from the touch of generations of petitioners, lawyers, registrars, and judges.

  It was a lovely room.

  Behind her, his voice rich and solemn, Officer Harris announced, “Hear ye, Hear ye, Hear ye. Court, all rise. The Middlesex Probate and Family Court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Kelly MacLeod presiding. God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  The Honorable Judge Kelly MacLeod settled in her chair behind the high bench, her black robe resting at her ankles. She nodded good morning to the court stenographer, then looked out, with confidence, at the courtroom.

  She saw, as she knew she would, clusters of people seated in the gallery. She saw a couple, well-dressed, elegant, and miserable, sulking next to their attorneys at the lawyers’ table. Their divorce. Her first case.

  Beyond the railing, she saw a lovely, slender, blond woman, the female plaintiff in the child custody case, with her lawyer.

  She saw another lawyer speaking to the male defendant in the child custody case.

  And she saw, with a terrible thrill, that this was the man whom, over the past few months, she had secretly known, secretly met, and secretly come, desperately, to love.

  One

  August 3, 2000

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK ON THE first Thursday in August, a small, elite group gathered in the waiting room of the Governor’s executive suite in the gold-domed State House in Boston, Massachusetts. Some of the most powerful and respected officials in the Commonwealth were there: the Governor, the Chief Justice of the Probate and Family Court Department, three judges, and several attorneys.

  They were all there because of Kelly MacLeod.

  This afternoon she would be administered the oath of office as Associate Justice of the Middlesex County Probate and Family Court.

  At thirty-five, Kelly MacLeod was the youngest woman ever to become a Massachusetts judge.

  And at this moment, she certainly felt young.

  From the far end of the hall came the hum and rustle of nearly eight hundred people gathering for the ceremony in the state legislative chambers. Kelly’s mouth was dry. Her knees were weak. Her mind was blank.

  Her fiancé, Jason, strode toward her through the crowded room. The scion of a wealthy Boston family, the son of a lawyer, a lawyer himself, Jason drew admiring looks as he passed. Now he put his hands on Kelly’s shoulders in a steadying way and said, “You look beautiful.”

  Dutifully she replied, “Thank you.” The truth was, she didn’t want to look beautiful, whatever that meant. She wanted to look intelligent and dignified, and perhaps—she was six feet tall, she could achieve this—imposing.

  She’d better settle for beautiful. She’d better settle for conscious. Here she stood, about to realize her life’s grandest dream, and she thought she might faint. Her lungs seemed paralyzed. She put one hand on her chest. Her throat was closing. She was drowning in the air.

  “I’m going out to join Mother,” Jason told Kelly.

  She nodded.

  “You’ll do fine,” he said. He planted a kiss on her hair, right next to her cheek.

  Had he mussed her hair? She’d worked fiendishly to subdue it in a French twist.

  Judge Colburn, Kelly’s role model and mentor for the past few years, appeared at her side. She had gray hair, solemn black eyes, a wise and wrinkled face, and an ability to read minds.

  “Your hair is perfect. Everything’s perfect, Kelly. This is your day. We’re all so proud of you.”

  Judge Linda Steinberg approached her, slowly, limping slightly. “It’s time,” she said.

  Kelly nodded. Here it was, the moment for which she’d been striving all her adult life, and she was on the verge of blacking out.

  “Deep breaths,” Judge Colburn said. “Look at me, Kelly. Deep breaths.” She demonstrated, putting her hand on her diaphragm and breathing in slowly.

  “Deep breaths,” the nurse had coached Kelly. “Look at me, Kelly. Deep breaths.…”

  Looking into Judge Colburn’s eyes, Kelly put her hand on her own diaphragm. She pulled sweet air into her lungs.

  The sergeant-at-arms, complete with top hat and staff, approached. “Ready?”

  Judge Steinberg looked at Kelly. “Ready?”

  Kelly smiled. “Ready.”

  Judge Steinberg turned to the others in the room.

  “All right, everyone,” she said. “Show time.”

  They fell into line: the Governor, the judges, the attorneys, and Kelly. They walked down the majestic marble halls.

  When they came to the wide center doors, the deputy clerk pounded the gavel three times. The sound reverberated through the air, hushing the crowd.

  “Oyez. Oyez. Oyez. All rise,” the deputy clerk called out. “The Honorable Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, accompanied by Judge Designate Kelly MacLeod. Please rise.”

  Kelly broke out in goose bumps from head to toe.

  Eight hundred people stood to watch the group filing in.

  The sergeant-at-arms led them in stately ceremonial step into the magnificent House Chamber. They entered through the center doors and walked single file down the aisle, over the bright blue rug with its gold fleurs-de-lis to the front of the room.

  Three massive chairs of black leather and ornately carved wood waited at the dais between the flag of the United States and the flag of the Commonwealth. Governor Hamilton took a chair, the Chief Justice of the Probate and Family Court Department, Judge Steinberg, took a chair, and Kelly took one. The other judges sat in the first row, where family members would ordinarily sit.

  Kelly smoothed her cream silk pants and suit jacket, aware that hundreds of people were smiling at her: friends, colleagues, former clients. It had taken her long hours into the night to compile her list and address the invitations she’d had printed. Now she was glad she’d made the effort. It was wonderful that so many people had come.

  It almost made up for the fact that no one she could call family was here.

  Ironic, really, since she was about to become a family court judge.

  “Good afternoon,” Judge Steinberg greeted the assembly.

  The hum of voices quieted. People settled in their seats. The room was still.

  “We are gathered here today to witness our good friend Kelly MacLeod receive the oath of office as Associate Justice of the Middlesex County Probate and Family Court,” Judge Steinberg announced. “This is an honor and a charge of great magnitude. In all of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts there are only forty-nine justices in the Probate and Family Court, and they are appointed to serve until the age of seventy. We put our trust for today and for the future into the hands of our justices, and we give our trust to Kelly MacLeod with great elation.”

  Kelly looked out at the audience. She spotted Professor Hammond, one of her first law professors, in his sagging tweed and bow tie. In a dress of flowered silk, Sally Beale, the woman who as a register of the probate court had taught her so much of the real work of justice. Donna Krebs, her best friend and colleague, buttoned up tight in a navy blue suit, trying to look solemn, but grinning like an idiot while tears sparkled in her eyes. Stout Fred Dunlap and lean Wallace Reed, senior partners in the fir
m where for seven years Kelly had had her professional home. Scattered throughout the crowd, other lawyers and clerks and secretaries. Some policemen. Some members of the Probation Department and the Family Service Clinic. She saw her fiancé, Jason, his face flushed with pride, and his mother, Eloise, sitting next to him, turning the diamonds on her fingers, looking completely bored.

  There had been only one time in all her life when she had missed—when she had needed—her own mother more.

  Judge Steinberg was saying, “Everyone here today knows Kelly MacLeod. We have studied with her, worked with her, built cases with her, heard her argue cases before us. We have fought with her. In many cases we have fought against her. And always, we have admired her. Perhaps we think we know her. Today we have invited three different people to tell us about the Kelly MacLeod they know.”

  “First, we would like to introduce Bettina Florez.”

  A plump young woman approached the podium. No one would ever have called her pretty, because all the lines of her face were too extreme: her jaw protruded in a triangular wedge, her enormous nose featured nostrils that were larger than her small black eyes, and her tight bush of black hair could not conceal her elephantine ears. But she carried her head high, and though her hands trembled as she lifted the pages of her speech, her eyes burned with pride as she looked out at the crowd—and as she looked at Kelly, they softened with love.

  “My name is Bettina Florez,” the woman said. “I first met Kelly MacLeod twelve years ago through the Big Sister program. She was just beginning her first year of law school, she was living in a two-bedroom apartment in Somerville with three other women, and she drove a fifteen-year-old Chevy with one hundred and sixty-five thousand miles on it. I do believe that car was in the shop more than it was on the road.”

  Bettina smiled then, and the audience smiled with her, for her smile was a lovely sight.

  “Kelly was working weekends and nights as well as attending law school, but she always found a way to spend time with me at least two days a week, and she never once canceled a date. I was fifteen years old then, living in Roxbury with my mother and my three brothers and sisters. I was smart, but I was starting to do drugs, mostly just to have a crowd to hang with. I was never a very popular girl, and I was very lonely. I think it’s fair to say that I also wasn’t the most charming of children.”