My Husband Framed Me for His Mistress's Crash novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: In Front of Everyone

Laurel takes the plea lawyer's pen, fires him in open court, pleads not guilty as her own counsel and has the car and body camera preserved, until the special prosecutor, her old moot court rival, asks the judge to deny her bail.

The best lawyer money could buy wore a suit that cost about nine hundred dollars.

I knew him. He had gone to law school with Marshall.

He didn't ask how I was.

He slid one sheet across the steel table in the gray room.

It was a plea. Vehicular manslaughter while impaired, six years in state prison.

My name was already typed at the bottom, above an empty line.

"The offer dies at nine tomorrow morning, when you see the judge," he said. "After that, they ask for the maximum."

Less than a day after the crash, and someone had six years ready on paper.

The offer came from a special prosecutor in the next county.

A District Attorney's wife can't be charged by his own office, so my case had been sent away.

Marshall couldn't touch it. But he had known the Deering County District Attorney for twenty years.

"Did you watch the officer's body camera?" I asked.

"Not yet."

"Did you ask for photos of the car at the scene?"

"They aren't in the file."

"Has anyone asked the county to keep the car exactly as it is?"

"Mrs. Kershaw, that isn't how this works."

His phone buzzed on the table.

He read it, smiled, and turned the screen toward me.

"So you can stop asking questions," he said.

It was a text from my husband. She'll sign. She always does.

Eight years of marriage, and that was the whole summary.

He wasn't wrong.

I signed when I quit my firm. I signed when we moved.

I signed the form that let Marshall read my therapy notes, the month after Wren died.

Every time, he kissed my forehead afterward, and I told myself it was a small thing.

Six years was not a small thing.

"Sign," the lawyer said. "Or your husband stops paying me, and you get a public defender with ninety open files."

"I'll sign tomorrow," I said. "In front of everyone."

His pen lay next to the plea, a cheap plastic one, the only kind allowed in that room.

I picked it up and clicked it once.

Then I put it in my jumpsuit pocket.

He didn't notice. He was already checking his phone.

At nine the next morning, Marlow County Courtroom Two was full.

Reporters filled the back rows. Two cameras stood on tripods in the aisle.

Marshall sat in the front row in a dark suit with his campaign pin on the lapel.

Melanie sat beside him in black, with my mother's pearls at her throat.

She had one hand on his arm, and he let her.

The judge looked down at me over her glasses. "Counsel, I understand there's an agreement."

The best lawyer money could buy stood up.

"Your Honor, my client will accept the State's offer and enter her plea."

Marshall lowered his head.

It was a good performance. I had watched him rehearse it in the bathroom mirror for eight years.

The judge turned to me. "Mrs. Kershaw, is that your plea?"

I stood up. The chain on my ankles scraped the floor.

"No, Your Honor."

The room went quiet.

"I'm discharging my attorney, effective now," I said. "I'll speak for myself. I plead not guilty."

The judge frowned. "Mrs. Kershaw, you haven't practiced in eight years."

"My license is inactive, Your Honor, not surrendered. And any defendant may speak for herself."

A bailiff handed me the notice of appearance.

I signed it with the plastic pen from my pocket.

Then I held the pen out across the rail to the man in the nine hundred dollar suit.

"You left this."

Behind me, a reporter laughed once and stopped.

Marshall's head came up. His face stayed calm, but the hand on his knee had closed.

"Your Honor, I have two requests," I said.

"Go ahead."

"The black sedan stays exactly as it is, with the driver's seat where it sits now, and nobody touches it."

"And the second?"

"The State preserves the arresting officer's body camera video."

"Granted," the judge said. "The State will preserve both."

Marshall heard it.

He watched the clerk write it down, and then he looked at the door.

At the other table, a man stood and buttoned his jacket.

He had dark hair, grey eyes and a navy suit worn thin at the cuffs.

"Duncan McGowan, special prosecutor from Deering County, for the State," he said.

"Your Honor, the State asks that Mrs. Kershaw be held without bail."

Eleven years ago, he had lost the national moot court final to me.

He had not looked at me then, either.

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