I Wouldn't Take Their Daughter's DUI, So I Healed the Man She Crippled novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Fall of the Haldanes

Edgar looked smaller in a gray jail jumpsuit.

He sat on the other side of a steel table with his hands cuffed to a ring, and his silver hair had lost its shine.

"Wynne," he said. "Thank you for coming."

"You have five minutes," I said.

"I won't fight the charges. I'll plead to every count, and the judge can have the whole file." He leaned forward as far as the cuffs let him. "In return, you stand up at sentencing and ask for mercy."

I laughed.

I could not stop myself, and the guard by the door looked over.

"I took you in," Edgar said. "Doesn't that count for something?"

"It counts for the price of a bedroom, which I paid for."

"I have something of your mother's."

He tipped his chin at the clear bag the guard had set beside him.

Inside was a cream envelope gone yellow at the edges, with my name on it in blue ink.

For Wynne, it said, when she is grown.

My breath went.

"Your mother wrote it the week before the flight," he said. "It was in her desk. I never gave it to you. I could not make myself burn it."

"You kept it because you thought it was worth something."

"Perhaps."

I stood and asked the guard for the bag.

He handed it over.

I held the envelope against my coat, unopened, and looked at the man who had made me his maid.

"Plead guilty, Edgar," I said. "I won't ask for mercy. I'll ask for the truth."

The courtroom in Richmond was crowded on the morning of sentencing.

Harlan sat in the front row with his hands folded on his cane.

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