“Harper,” he said. His voice carried the warm, fatherly tone he used in front of other people, but there was a thinness behind it now, a thread being pulled too tight. “Sweetheart, this isn’t the time.”
Harper looked at him with a seriousness that did not belong on a ten year old’s face. “You told me the judge needed to know the truth,” she said.
Something broke in Caleb’s expression. Not dramatically. Not in a way that anyone who did not know him would have noticed. But I noticed. The mask shifted, just slightly, and behind it I saw the man I had been trying to describe to attorneys and judges for months, the man nobody believed existed because he was so good at not existing in front of witnesses.
“Harper,” he repeated, and this time the false sweetness was gone. “Don’t do this.”
Caleb’s attorney stood so quickly she nearly knocked over her chair. “Your Honor, this is clearly inappropriate. The child is being influenced, and whatever she has been told to present.”
