Chapter 20: Guilty Before Lunch

Susannah's POV

Kendra would not take the plea.

Kendra's mother had paid twenty thousand dollars of Joy's bill and signed it with an apology, and she had not called me since.

Her daughter's lawyer, the man in the gray overcoat, said so on the courthouse steps to nine cameras.

"My client is innocent of any crime except being a friend to the wrong family," he said.

Four weeks later, I sat in the witness box in a borrowed blazer with my hands in my lap.

The courtroom was full.

Lorna sat in the front row with Peggy beside her, and Nate sat behind them, alone, in a suit he'd bought on sale.

Kendra sat at the defense table with her hair pulled back and a pearl clip over her ear.

She looked at me and did not blink.

The prosecutor asked me the easy questions first.

Where I was going, what I saw, and what I heard.

I said it in my plain voice.

I said I called my husband, and he stayed with her.

Then it was the lawyer's turn.

He rose slowly and buttoned his jacket.

"Mrs. Ardrey, you and your husband had argued earlier that day, hadn't you?"

"No."

"You were upset. Distracted. Looking at your phone."

"I was driving home from my sister's. The phone was in the cup holder."

"And you entered the intersection at Delmont and Fourth on a yellow light, at excessive speed, and my client could not avoid you."

The back of the room made a noise.

I looked at him.

"I stopped at the red," I said. "I sat there until it turned green. Then I started forward at the speed of someone who's eight months pregnant."

"That's your memory."

"It's on a camera."

The prosecutor stood up quietly.

"Your Honor, the State would like to play the gas station recording."

The screen on the wall lit up, black and white.

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