She Made It, Then Dumped Me novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Room 612
They held me for nineteen hours.
I spent them on a steel bench in a cell with a man who recognized me from the news and asked for my autograph.
At nine the next morning, two marshals walked me into a courtroom for arraignment.
The seats were packed to the back wall.
Penelope sat in the front row.
Beside her, in a cardigan I knew from the photographs, sat a thin man with white hair and a pillbox in his shirt pocket.
He stood up when I came in.
I had never seen his face before.
I had read his name on four years of paper.
The judge read the charges.
My lawyer asked for release on my own recognizance, and the prosecutor asked for a million dollars in bail.
"The defendant is a flight risk with offices in London," the prosecutor said.
"The defendant has a father in intensive care," my lawyer said, "and a passport that was flagged two weeks ago."
The judge looked at the file.
"Bail is set at five hundred thousand," she said. "Cash or bond."
My accounts were frozen.
My chief of staff had her phone out, and I could see her thumb shaking.
"Your Honor," a voice said from the gallery.
The thin man in the cardigan was on his feet.
"I'll post it," he said.
The judge frowned.
"Sir, who are you?"
"Penelope's father," he said. "I used to own Ambrose Pictures."
My throat closed.
"I have a house in New Jersey with no mortgage," he said. "It was paid off four years ago by someone who never told me his name. I'd like to put it up for him."
Penelope had her hand over her mouth.
The courtroom was entirely silent.
"Sir," the judge said, "do you understand that if the defendant leaves, you lose the house?"
"He isn't leaving, Your Honor."
"How do you know?"
"Because he never came to our door in four years," Penelope's father said. "A man like that doesn't run. He just stays where he's ashamed."
The judge looked at him for a long moment.
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