My Husband Framed Me. I Took It All. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Hearing

Soren testifies against his own case and Rosalyn sets a press photo of Chloe's earrings beside the exhibit; the judge vacates the conviction and Annika walks out, and Soren drives her home to a porch light and her sister in her robe.

They moved me in handcuffs, in orange, to the same courtroom where I had been sentenced four days before.

The same judge sat on the bench.

She looked like she hadn't slept either.

Rosalyn walked beside me with a folder under her arm and a peppermint in her cheek.

"Don't look at the gallery," she said. "Look at the bench."

I looked at the gallery.

Carter sat in the second row in a dark suit.

Chloe was beside him, in black, holding his hand again.

She had on the pearls.

Both of them.

She touched the left one with two fingers when she saw me.

The prosecutor stood and said the state objected to everything.

"Newly discovered evidence, Your Honor? A photograph the defense has had in its possession for no one knows how long?"

"I don't have it," Rosalyn said pleasantly. "He does."

She turned and held out a hand.

Soren Falk walked up the aisle in his grey coat.

He didn't look at me.

He raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth.

"Detective," Rosalyn said. "Tell the court what you found under Lars Krebs's desk."

"One pearl earring."

"What kind of back did it have?"

"A butterfly clip."

"Did you put that in your report?"

"Yes."

"Where is that page now?"

"I don't know."

The prosecutor jumped up.

"Your Honor, the detective is a disgruntled employee."

"I'm a homicide detective with fourteen years on the job," Soren said.

"I put the wrong person in prison, and I think I did it because my captain wanted an easy close."

The courtroom made a sound like a breath going out.

His captain stood against the back wall in a dress uniform.

His face went the color of cold oatmeal.

Soren kept his eyes on the judge.

"I'd rather lose my job than keep it like that."

Rosalyn gave him a nod, and then she picked up a large board from the table and set it on an easel.

It was a news photograph from my sentencing, blown up twice the size of a window.

Chloe's head and shoulders, tears on her cheek, and her ear right in the middle.

The pearl on it hung from a thick gold post.

You could see the thread cut into the metal.

"That's a screw back, Your Honor," Rosalyn said.

"Mrs. Wendt's mother's earrings were screw backs. Her sister is wearing them in this photograph, taken five minutes after the verdict, with the pair complete."

She set the plastic evidence bag beside the board.

"Here is the earring the state said Mrs. Wendt dropped at a murder scene."

The judge leaned forward to look.

She asked for the bag.

The clerk handed it up.

The judge held it to the window for a long time.

"Mr. Prosecutor," she said at last. "Which earring was in the victim's study?"

"Your Honor, the state believes..."

"I'm not asking what you believe."

He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

I felt Rosalyn's elbow touch mine.

That was her whole signal.

"The conviction is vacated," the judge said.

"A new trial will be scheduled. The defendant is released on her own recognizance pending that trial, effective immediately."

The gavel came down.

It was the same gavel, and it sounded like a different sound.

For a second, I couldn't hear anything.

Then somebody behind me was crying, and I knew without turning around it was Chloe.

She cried well.

She always had.

"Annika," she said as the bailiff took off my cuffs.

I turned.

She had stood up, and she was holding both hands against her chest.

"I don't understand what's happening," she said, to the whole room. "I just want my sister safe."

I didn't answer her.

I looked at her ears.

She saw me look.

She dropped her hands.

Carter was staring at the board with the enlarged photo on it, and his hand had gone slack.

His eyes finally moved to Soren.

I'd never seen him look at a man like that.

It lasted one second.

Then he stood and buttoned his jacket and smiled for a reporter.

They gave me a plastic bag with the clothes I'd worn the day I was arrested.

A dark green coat, a pair of boots, a phone with a dead battery.

I changed in a bathroom stall and walked out into a cold white October afternoon.

Rosalyn was waiting on the steps with a paper cup of coffee.

"I'll be in touch tomorrow," she said. "Don't talk to anyone. Don't talk to your sister. I mean it."

She gave me a peppermint.

Soren's car was at the curb, a gray sedan with a dent in one door.

He opened the passenger side without a word.

I got in.

We drove for ten minutes with the heat blasting.

"You could say something," I said.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I'm sorry I stood in the back row for a year with a photograph in my pocket."

"That's something."

"It's not enough."

"No," I agreed.

He turned onto Cass Street, onto my block, and I felt my stomach turn over.

There was the house.

A white brick two-story with the green door I'd painted myself.

Every light was on.

A moving truck sat in the driveway with its back open.

And on the front porch, in my robe, with a mug in her hand and my mother's pearls in her ears, stood my sister.

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