Chapter 5: General Population

"Who cut the mattress?" I said.

Trenton set the trash bag down and held up both hands.

"The cops, man. They tore the whole place apart after you vanished, and again after Laurel's arrest. Dad's lawyer told me."

He said it too easily.

I had been in that cellar for five years, and I knew the sound of a man reading a line.

But I had no way to prove it, and he was my brother.

"I want to go home," I said.

He drove me back with the radio on and his hand tapping the wheel, relaxed as a man on vacation.

I counted the stops and the turns, and I kept my mouth shut.

Two days later, a judge in a gray robe set the sentencing date for the end of the month.

I sat in the front row of the courtroom between my parents.

They brought Laurel in through the side door.

She had a split lip and a swollen left eye, and she held her ribs like every breath cost her something.

My mother gasped.

"Good," someone whispered behind me. "Let her feel it."

I turned my head.

It was a woman in a church hat, and she was smiling.

I felt hot all the way down my spine.

At the defense table, Laurel stood when the judge told her to.

She was alone.

She had no lawyer, no family, no one at all in her row.

"Mrs. Thayer, do you still wish to proceed without counsel?" the judge asked.

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Do you understand the sentence you are facing?"

"I do."

"Is there anything you'd like to say to the court?"

Laurel looked straight ahead.

"No," she said. "Thank you."

Her voice was hoarse and level.

The judge looked at her split lip, frowned, and wrote something down.

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