Chapter 17: Under Oath

The courtroom on Monday morning was smaller than the one I remembered.

I stopped inside the doors anyway, because the last time I had walked into a room like this, it had ended with eight years.

My lawyer touched my elbow.

"Mrs. Bancroft. Sit."

I sat at the table on the left.

Behind me, in the back row on the left side, in the aisle seat, a man in a grey coat took his place.

I turned my head, and Patrick looked at me.

This time he was not there because he had to be.

Across the aisle Desmond sat with his lawyer in the navy suit, calm and well rested, one hand folded over the other.

Jocelyn sat behind him in the first row.

She smiled at me, small and sorry.

The judge came in and the room stood and sat.

Desmond's lawyer spoke first. He used the words concern, fragile and unstable twice each.

Then Desmond took the stand.

He put his hand on the book and said he would tell the truth.

He told it beautifully. He spoke about his daughter's bedtime and his wife's long hours.

He said he had never wanted any of this.

"Mr. Bancroft," my lawyer said when it was her turn. "Do you know a young woman named Annie Presnell?"

"She was an assistant at the firm."

"When did you first speak to her?"

"I barely knew her. We met in March, at a company picnic."

"March."

"That's right."

"So you've never been alone with her, never texted her, before March."

"Never."

He said it easily.

It was the same word, in the same voice, I had heard from a witness stand once before.

My lawyer lifted three sheets of paper.

"This is the school's pickup list for Junie Bancroft. It shows Annie Presnell added on a Friday in October, in your hand, as your cousin."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Reborn to Destroy My Husband's Crying Mistress from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.