Queen Never Cry novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Sentence
In a Chicago courtroom Pippa refuses to sign her four-year-old daughter over to her husband's new woman, and is sentenced to three years as he tells her the family house is already sold.
The judge said three years, and my husband did not look at me.
He looked at the floor instead, with his jaw working.
It was a good performance.
I had watched him practice it in our bathroom mirror for the last six weeks.
"Philippa Corrigan," the judge said, "you stole from children who needed scholarships."
"Three point eight million dollars from the family foundation you chaired."
"You will serve three years."
I stood very straight in a grey jacket that smelled of the county jail.
I did not cry.
My grandmother taught me that when I was nine, at my parents' funeral.
A Corrigan does not cry where her enemies can see.
So I kept my face still, and the whole courtroom stared at it, waiting for it to break.
Behind the rail, the gallery rustled.
In the second row sat Lydia Kenilworth, in cream, with my daughter on her lap.
Posy was four years old.
She had a blue ribbon in her curls, the one I tied that morning before the officers came.
Lydia had retied it crooked.
Posy saw me and reached with both hands.
"Mama!"
Lydia folded her small fingers down and pressed them against her own cream silk.
I had known Lydia for eleven years.
I paid half her tuition and got her the bookkeeper's job at my foundation.
I stood as her maid of honor and she stood as mine.
Four days ago she sat on that witness stand and swore she watched me move the money.
She cried so prettily that the jury passed her a box of tissues.
The judge called a ten-minute recess before the officers took me out.
They let me stay at the defense table with my hands cuffed in front.
The old lawyer I had trusted gathered his papers and would not meet my eyes.
Then Desmond walked up to the rail.
He was thirty-four and beautiful, tan, with sandy hair swept back and a charcoal suit that cost more than my first car.
He put one hand on the wood, close enough to touch my sleeve.
"Pippa." His voice was soft, for the benefit of the reporters behind him. "I don't want this to end in hatred."
"You don't want anything," I said.
He smiled sadly, a smile for the cameras, and slid a paper across the table.
It was a petition for adoption.
Child: Posy Roarke.
Adoptive mother: Lydia Kenilworth Roarke.
"Sign it, and I drop the civil suit against your grandmother," he said quietly. "She keeps the house in Lake Forest."
"My grandmother is seventy-seven years old."
"Then she'll be glad to keep her bed."
I looked at the pen.
I looked at Posy, who was twisting in Lydia's lap, still reaching.
I knew what he was doing.
He wanted me to sign my own daughter away to keep one old woman warm.
He expected me to break at last, for the room to watch it.
I picked up the paper in both cuffed hands.
The courtroom went quiet in a ripple from the front row to the back.
I tore it down the middle.
Then I tore the halves again, and let them fall on the floor between us.
"My daughter has a mother," I said, loud enough for the stenographer. "You can tell Lydia to keep her hands off her hair."
Someone in the gallery gasped.
Lydia's face went white and then red.
Desmond's smile stayed exactly where it was, but his eyes went flat and cold.
"As you like," he said.
The bailiff took my elbow.
At the side door Posy screamed my name, a high thin sound I can still hear in a quiet room.
I did not turn my head.
If I turned, she would see my face move, and so would they.
Desmond fell into step beside the officer.
He leaned in until his mouth was beside my ear.
"The house sold on Tuesday, Pippa."
His breath was warm and smelled of mint.
"Your grandmother has nowhere to come home to, and neither do you."
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