The Littlest Prosecutor novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: I'm Going to Sue You
At the family dinner, six-year-old Birdie files charges against her stepmother, but her father says the red hand was just the gate.
"I'm going to sue you."
I said it at the Aldridge family dinner, with my spoon in my fist, looking right at my stepmother.
Uncle Desmond laughed so hard his reading glasses fell off his head.
"Three generations of lawyers at this table," he said. "And the six-year-old has caught the bug."
The whole table chuckled.
I was the only one who knew I wasn't joking.
I was six, and I hardly talked.
Everyone thought something was wrong with me.
Nothing was wrong with my memory.
My memory was a steel trap, Grandpa Ambrose said once, and he was a judge for forty years, so he would know.
When Faye first moved in, she told everyone I was an angel.
"Birdie is so well-behaved," she said, and she smiled with all her teeth. "Here, sweetie. Have a candy."
It was a white rabbit candy, wrapped in paper with a rabbit on it.
White rabbit candy is my favorite, and Faye knew that, because my daddy told her.
Today in the upstairs hallway, she waited until nobody was near.
She took the candy out of my hand and threw it on the hardwood floor.
"You think a little mute freak like you gets candy?" she said. "Who's going to believe a freak who can't even talk?"
It was true that my words got stuck when she was close.
They sat in my throat.
Then she said she would help me wash my hands.
She pulled me into the bathroom, and she held my hand under the water, and she dug her nails into the back of it until it bled.
Nobody was in the bathroom but us.
I forced myself not to cry.
I did not cry, because I had a plan.
That night, at dinner, I put my spoon down, and I stood up on my chair, and I held up my right hand.
It was red and swollen, with four little curved cuts across the back.
The room went quiet.
"Your Honor," I said.
My voice came out tiny and high, but it came out.
"I want to file a lawsuit."
Daddy had been cutting his chicken.
He stopped with the knife in his hand.
"The defendant is the mean lady," I said, and I pointed my spoon at Faye. "She murdered my white rabbit candy."
Somebody coughed.
"The charge is robbery," I said. "The witness is me. The evidence is the candy."
I had brought the evidence.
I took it out of my cardigan pocket, flat and dusty, with a hair stuck to the wrapper, and I laid it next to my plate.
"And the prosecution demands," I said, and my voice shook, "that she is banned from my house forever."
Tears came up behind my eyes.
I pushed them back down.
The littlest lawyer in the Aldridge family could not cry in court.
Daddy reached over and pulled me down off the chair and into his lap.
He was holding me, but he was frozen all the way through.
Across the long table, all five of my uncles set their forks down.
They did it one at a time, very slowly.
They were the best lawyers in Hartford, and they all had the same look.
It was the look they had in front of a jury when the other side said something wrong.
Ever since Faye moved in, I had been a little mute.
Everyone thought I was sick.
The truth was that I had been building a case file against her, one red sticker at a time.
Faye put her hand flat on her chest.
Her smile stayed on her face, but her eyes did not match it.
"Oh, honey," she said. "You had such a bad dream today. You scratched yourself on the garden gate, remember?"
I looked at my daddy.
He looked at my hand.
The four little curves were right there, in a row, as neat as piano keys.
Gates do not scratch in rows.
"Patrick," Faye said softly. "Tell them. You were there when she fell."
I had not fallen, and Daddy was not there.
He was at the office until seven.
I waited for him to say so.
Daddy swallowed.
He did not look at me.
"Yes," he said. "She did scratch it on the gate."
The room was so quiet I could hear the clock in the hall.
Then Uncle Desmond picked his glasses up off the floor, put them on, and turned his whole chair toward Faye.
He was not laughing anymore.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend