He Defended Her, He Said I Deserved It novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Plea Day

Lainie files for divorce and names Kerri out loud in her victim statement with Brantley sitting beside her, and the man in the van tells her on his way out that her husband knows him.

On Friday I got divorced before breakfast.

Not all the way. Just the part with the paper.

The divorce lawyer met me at the clerk's window on the first floor at eight fifteen.

She had a rolling briefcase and the face of a woman who'd done this a thousand times.

"Grounds?" the clerk asked.

"Cruelty," my lawyer said.

The clerk glanced at my cheek and stamped it without another word.

Then I took the elevator up to the courtroom where my husband's client was going to plead guilty to attacking me.

I'd been in that courtroom maybe two hundred times.

Always in the second row on the left. Always with my pad on my knee and my chalk in my lap.

Today the victim advocate walked me to the first row on the right.

"You don't have to look at him," she said.

"I look at everybody," I said. "It's my job."

Across the aisle, in my old seat, sat the kid the station had sent to replace me.

He had my brand of pastels.

He looked at me, went red to the ears, and started drawing me anyway.

I didn't blame him. I'd have drawn me too.

The doors at the back opened at five to nine.

Brantley came in first, in the charcoal suit I'd bought him for his thirty-fifth birthday.

Kerri came in behind him, in a cream blouse buttoned to the throat.

He didn't sit with the prosecutors. He didn't sit with me.

He walked her up the left aisle with one hand flat against the small of her back.

He sat down beside her, one row behind the kid with my pastels.

The kid stopped drawing.

So did the woman from the newspaper next to him.

Behind me, somebody whispered, "Is that his wife up front?"

I kept my eyes forward.

In the back row, by the door, a big man in a flannel shirt folded his arms and settled in.

I hadn't told Ike what time it was. Bail bondsmen just know when court starts.

They brought the man in from the side door at nine sharp.

Orange jumpsuit. Ankle chains. Heavy shoulders.

I'd never seen his face in the light.

It was an ordinary face. Pink, puffy, a little bored. A face you'd forget at a gas station.

Then he put his hands on the table.

There was a blue anchor tattooed between the thumb and the first finger of the right one.

I knew that hand.

I'd bitten it.

My lungs forgot how to work for a second, and the advocate's fingers closed on my sleeve.

I breathed.

The judge read the charges. Attempted abduction with intent to defile. Assault and battery.

"How do you plead?"

"Guilty," the man said.

His voice was the voice from my phone at 11:41.

Your brother's here, he'd said. Your husband fell in the lot.

The prosecutor read out the agreement. Twelve years.

"Is there a victim impact statement?" the judge asked.

I stood up.

My legs were fine. My hands were the problem, so I held the paper with both of them.

"My name is Lainie Shore," I said. "On August twenty-seventh, that man called me and said he was Kerri Gaskill's brother."

I didn't look at my paper after that.

"He said my husband was hurt. I ran out of my house in what I was sleeping in. He was waiting in the dark."

I told them the rest. Not all of it. Enough.

The tank top. The van door. The taste of his hand.

The rib that still caught when I laughed.

"He's going to prison, and he should," I said. "But he didn't pick me out of a crowd. He'd never met me."

I turned my head.

I looked straight across the aisle at the cream blouse.

"Kerri Gaskill paid him fifteen hundred dollars to get me into that lot. She's sitting right there."

The room made a sound.

Kerri's chin came up. Her eyes filled on cue.

Brantley rose halfway out of his seat.

"Your Honor, Ms. Gaskill is not a party to this..."

"Sit down, Mr. Treadway," the judge said. "You're not counsel of record here, either."

He sat down.

I watched him do it. I'd never seen anyone tell him to sit down.

"She was there," I said. "She wasn't home all night. She was there, and one day she'll be standing where he's standing."

I folded my paper in half.

"That's my statement."

The judge was quiet for a long moment.

"Thank you, Ms. Shore."

He accepted the plea. Twelve years.

The deputies brought the man to his feet.

The side door was behind the defense table, but the deputy on his left was new and turned him the wrong way, toward the bar.

So for three steps he walked right past my row.

He slowed down.

He looked across the aisle first.

Not at Kerri.

At Brantley.

It was the look you give a man you've shaken hands with.

Then he leaned toward me, close enough for me to smell the jail soap.

"Your husband knows me," he said, low and pleasant. "Ask him what I did last time."

The deputy yanked him on.

The side door banged shut.

Across the aisle, Brantley was looking down at his own hands.

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