Haven't Forgotten My Way Home (Camren)

Chapter Twenty-Four

She had expected the courtroom to look... just like that, a courtroom. A vast expanse of rule and punishment, dark woods and a high bench in the center from which the judge would condemn them all.

She had probably watched way too much television, Camila decided, or it could be because only the major cases were tried in the main courtroom down the hall. Most, such as domestic disputes or "severed claims" (such a distasteful phrase, Camila thought) were heard in 203Left. It was little more than a boardroom, with 3 tables pushed together in an open-ended square, and the gallery was three or four rows of metal chairs sat towards the back of the room. Two members of the council sat in the very back row, a presence Camila noticed with a slight tinge of fear.

"Are you sure I can't go up there with her?" she whispered to Spencer, who was sat beside her in the first row.

She looked so vulnerable, Camila thought, flanked on either side by her lawyer and Toby... and him directly in front of her.

Brad Simpson didn't look like a man capable of making a young girl's life a living hell, and that, Camila knew, was because Normani had done a good job prepping him. Clean-shaven, hair cut short and slicked back. His suit was dark, but not so dark as to give off the impression of "bad guy," impeccably tailored and well-fitting. He sat ramrod straight in his chair, his fingers drumming lightly against the wood table the only indication that he was the accused.

He looked, Camila thought, like a little boy in a man's clothes. And that, she knew, was what had started it all.

She shook her head and turned her attention back to the girl who mattered most, the girl who was staring at her with eyes wide and somewhat fearful. Camila smiled reassuringly, wishing with everything she had that she could go up there to her, to hold her in her arms and whisper that it was all going to turn out all right.

Except she didn't know if it would.

Toby had helped Lauren dress for the trial as well, a move that Camila knew was just as calculated as Normani's. She didn't like it, because the white short-sleeve peasant shirt and black pants, along with a simple pair of black tennis shoes and Lauren's hair held back on one side by a clip, made Lauren look even younger, smaller, more lost than what Camila knew she was.

Even if, just two nights ago, she'd been afraid Lauren had become lost to her forever.

Camila had known, from the moment she'd walked down the hall to her bedroom and found Lauren staring at her collection of punishment implements, hand held fast but shaking against the cabinet door, what the young woman had been thinking of. It had tempered Camila's anger, somewhat, at her things having been gone through without permission, but it had been exacerbated, too, by the fact that Lauren still didn't trust her.

It had made her irrationally frustrated, in those few short seconds standing there watching Lauren struggle with her own emotions, that after all this time, after all the care and devotion Camila had thought she'd provided, Lauren was still afraid of her. Hadn't she done well? Camila thought to herself, after Lauren had gone to the living room and she was gathering up the paddle, the belt, the strap, the hairbrush, the crop in her hands and walking back down the hall herself, formulating the plan in her mind. Hadn't she praised Lauren at every turn, hadn't she made sure to call her good girl after every punishment, hadn't she held her and loved her after every punishment, made sure that Lauren knew it was a clean slate, that everything was forgiven?

Hadn't she been unlike Brad Simpson at every possible opportunity?

She'd wanted to call Spencer, to call and ask what she should do, because why should she have to keep proving herself over and over again? But she knew what Spencer would say, yet another lesson Camila had learned while kneeling at the woman's feet.