Chapter 19: Hearing

The courtroom was smaller than I expected, with a flag in the corner and a clock that ran four minutes slow.

We sat in the second row.

Margaret was on my right with her handbag in her lap.

Levi was on my left, and Dad was at the end in the same rented suit.

Bree sat alone in the first row behind the rail.

At nine-fifteen a side door opened and an officer brought Lorna in.

She wore a gray jail jumpsuit and no pearls.

Her silver hair had grown out an inch at the roots overnight, and her hands were cuffed in front of her.

I looked at her nails.

The polish was gone from every one, and the index finger on her right hand was broken to the quick.

I had never seen my mother's hands bare.

"All rise," said the clerk.

The judge was a gray-haired woman with half-moon glasses who didn't look at the room once. She read the sheet in front of her.

Lorna's lawyer spoke first.

He said his client was a former nurse of fifty-four with no record and a family, and that she wasn't a danger to anyone.

"A family," the judge said.

"Yes, Your Honor. A husband and a daughter."

"I see the daughter on the prosecutor's list."

The lawyer cleared his throat.

The prosecutor, a tired man in a brown suit, rose and said the state would like to hear from Bree Moynihan.

Bree got up. She walked through the little gate in the rail and stood at the stand with her hands flat against the wood.

She didn't look at the judge. She looked at our mother.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Rejected Jinx Is A Billionaire Heiress from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.