My Husband Framed Me. I Took It All. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Twenty-Five Years
At her sentencing Annika sees her sister holding her husband's hand, wearing their mother's pearls, and stands up to name the proof in front of the court; the judge silences her, and Carter whispers that the house is already sold.
The judge said twenty-five years.
My husband didn't blink.
My sister was holding his hand.
Not comforting him. Holding him, with their fingers laced and her thumb stroking his knuckle.
When the gavel came down, Carter leaned over and kissed her hair.
In my courtroom, at my sentencing, for a murder I didn't commit.
I remember thinking something stupid.
I thought, Chloe is wearing my earrings.
They were the pearl drops our mother left me.
I had lent them to Chloe for her birthday dinner two years ago, and I never asked for them back.
That's what you do for a little sister you practically raised.
Eleven days earlier, Carter had sat in the witness box and told twelve strangers I confessed to him in our bed.
He said I cried and said, "Lars found out about the money."
He said he held me all night and then he did the right thing and called the police.
He had never blinked once.
Chloe sat in the front row that day with a tissue and a black dress, and when he finished, she nodded at him.
I thought she was being kind to a man in pain.
I really did think that.
I stood up.
My legs did it without me.
The chair scraped and every head in the gallery turned.
My lawyer, a golfing friend of my husband's, caught my sleeve and whispered, "Annika, sit down."
I pulled my arm out of his hand.
"Your Honor," I said.
My voice cracked on the first word, so I said it again.
"Your Honor, I have something to say about the evidence."
"Mrs. Wendt, the proceedings are concluded," the judge said.
"There's an earring in that bag."
I pointed at the exhibit table beside the clerk.
A little plastic bag sat there with a tag on it.
Inside was one pearl drop, the one they found under Lars Krebs's desk.
The one the prosecutor held up for the jury and called my signature.
"The post on that earring has a butterfly back," I said.
"The little clip you squeeze on."
The courtroom went quiet.
"My mother's earrings have screw backs. They're old. You twist them on."
I didn't look at the judge anymore.
I looked at my sister.
"Look at her ears," I said. "Everybody look at her ears."
Chloe's hand flew up to her left lobe.
She did it too fast.
Then she remembered where she was, and her eyes filled.
"Annika," she whispered, loud enough for the first three rows. "Please. Don't do this to yourself."
Somebody in the gallery said, "Poor thing."
Somebody else said, "She's lost it."
The prosecutor didn't even stand up.
"Your Honor, the defendant has had a full trial," he said.
"The jury heard from the owner of the earring herself."
That was me.
I had said on the stand that it was mine, because it looked exactly like mine.
Nobody had asked me about the back.
I had been too busy being sure that someone would.
"Take her out," the judge said.
Two bailiffs closed on either side of me.
One of them had a hand around my arm.
I could still see the pearls swinging from Chloe's ears.
Both of them.
She had both.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I turned my head.
Carter had come to the rail.
He looked the way he always looked in a courtroom, in the navy suit I picked out for his birthday.
He looked kind.
He leaned in close, and the bailiffs let him.
"I closed on the house Friday," he said softly.
"Chloe's moving in this weekend."
He smiled the small smile he used for investors.
"She says your side of the bed has better light."
I tried to lunge at him.
The bailiffs held me.
The last thing I saw before the doors closed was a man in the back row, big, in a grey coat, with a broken nose.
He was the detective who put the cuffs on me.
He wasn't looking at the judge or at me.
He was staring at my sister's ears.
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