Chapter 16: Casserole

The courtroom was smaller than I expected, with a flag, a clock and six rows of benches.

I had not slept, because of the signature in the lawyer's folder.

Everett had called the prosecutor at six, and she had said a two-year-old consent form proved a signature and nothing else.

"She wants Sloane's own words," he had told me, "before she believes a line of it."

I wanted them too, and I was afraid of them.

My mother came in through a side door at nine in a navy suit, with her sling pinned under the jacket.

She had done her hair.

She stood next to her lawyer and folded her good hand over her wrist, and anyone who didn't know her would have seen a tired widow.

The clerk read three counts in a flat voice.

Conspiracy to commit assault.

Unlawful administration of a controlled drug to another person.

Cruelty to a person in her care.

"How does the defendant plead?" the judge asked.

"Not guilty, Your Honor," my mother said, in her softest voice.

Dale sat in the third row.

He had not looked at me once since I came in, and Everett had not looked at him once, and I sat between them.

Behind us the pastor's wife had brought four altar guild women in good coats.

None of them wore the guild pin.

The prosecutor, a woman with a tired face and a legal pad, asked for bail with conditions.

"The defendant is to have no contact with the complainant, Callie Lund," she said. "Not in person, by phone or through anyone else."

"Mrs. Lund is my daughter," my mother said, and her voice broke on the word. "I only want to see my daughter."

"Mrs. Haldane," the judge said, "you will speak through counsel."

The bail was fifty thousand dollars.

Dale's name was not on the sheet, and I watched his shoulders drop two inches when the judge moved on.

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