They Threw Us in the Snow. I Owned Everything. novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Judge Watches the Door

Litchfield Family Court has wooden benches and a radiator that bangs.

By nine o'clock on the 27th every bench was full.

Margaret sat in the front row behind Colin with her pearls on.

Brandy sat in the back with her left hand under her purse.

Two women from Margaret's bridge table sat in the middle, staring at me.

Joy stayed with Tobias in the hallway, where a court officer had found her a coloring book.

My lawyer sat down beside me and squeezed my wrist once.

"Don't argue with him," she said. "Let him talk."

Colin's lawyer stood up first.

He said I was a part-time bookkeeper with no savings, that I had taken a sick seven-year-old out into the snow in the middle of the night, and that I now slept under the roof of a man the family had cut off for theft.

"Mrs. Thayer has never taken her daughter's medical needs seriously," he said.

My lawyer wrote that down and didn't look up.

Then Colin took the stand.

He wore a navy suit and his sad, steady face.

"I walked them to the door," he said. "Laurel was upset about some papers, and she ran out with Joy. I asked her to wait, and she wouldn't."

"Did anyone lock the door?" my lawyer asked on cross.

"It locks by itself," Colin said. "It's an old house."

"And Joy's inhaler?"

"I didn't know it was there."

"You didn't see it on the hall table?"

"No."

"Never?"

"No."

My lawyer asked the judge for permission to play something.

The clerk rolled over a screen.

The courtroom darkened a little, and the grainy green picture came up.

Nine-fourteen. The door. Me and Joy in the snow.

Nobody in the benches moved.

Then the footage showed what the porch hadn't shown me.

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