Page 65 of The Best Lawyer
“Jeanie,” I said. “You’re up. He’s putting Joe on next.”
That was the deal we made. I would not cross-examine my own brother.
“I’m ready.”
“Is he?” Katy asked.
“He just has to tell the truth,” I said.
“All rise!” the bailiff called out.
Judge Castor retook the bench. “Mr. Quick?” he said.
“The state calls Joseph Leary,” Quick said, nearly shouting it.
My brother walked in wearing the blue suit I bought him last year. He was clean shaven, handsome. He looked exactly like our father if the old man hadn’t let himself get pickled by alcohol.
He took his oath and stared Addison Quick down. Keep your cool, I thought. The last thing Katy needed was a flash of my brother’s legendary Leary temper.
“Mr. Leary,” Addison started. “I’d like to cut right to it. Please tell me your relationship to the accused.”
“Katy is my ex-wife,” he said. “We were married for almost seventeen years.”
“That’s a long time. Do you have any children together?”
“Not together. Not biologically. But Katy and I raised my daughter from a previous relationship together. Emma.”
“Got it.” Quick rifled through some notes, then left them behind and came out from behind the lectern. He leaned against the jury box for the remainder of his direct exam.
“Mr. Leary, please explain the circumstances of your divorce from Katy.”
Joe stared straight at me. Jeanie sat with her hands folded on the table. Katy’s bottom lip quivered. Part of me wanted to strangle her. Everything that happened to Tom was horrific. He was the victim in this. But because of it, my brother would now be forced to recount in open court some of the worst, most humiliating events of his life.
“That’s hard to answer,” he said. “There wasn’t just one thing.”
“Oh, I’d say there was a pretty big thing, wasn’t there?”
“Objection,” Jeanie said. “Argumentative.”
“Sustained. Try that again, Mr. Quick.”
“Fine. Mr. Leary, what would you describe as the biggest factor in the unraveling of your marriage to Katy?”
Joe cleared his throat. “It came to my attention that Katy was having an affair with Tom Loomis.”
“When did this begin?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there when it happened,” Joe said through gritted teeth.
“Do you know how long it had been going on?”
“Not definitively, no,” Joe said. “A few months, I believe.”
“How did you become aware that your wife was cheating on you?”
Joe picked at his sleeve. “She told me.”
“She just came out and told you one day? All of her own volition?”
