214 Wills novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: One Will

The hearing took nine minutes.

Callie sat at the front table in a plain navy dress, with her cast out to the side and a walker beside her chair.

The county prosecutor stood alone at the other table with a single folder, and he did not look at her.

Beth sat behind us, and next to Beth sat the dead man's daughter in her good black dress.

The judge was a woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a chain.

She read the motion through once without speaking.

Then she took off her glasses and looked down at Callie.

"Ms. Troyer, the state has told this court that your guilty plea was entered on a statement the state now knows to be false."

"Yes, Your Honor."

"The state has also told me that you served three years on that plea.

"Nobody in this county told you the truth when it counted."

"No, Your Honor."

"I am sorry," the judge said.

She said it plainly, to a woman in a navy dress, and I felt Callie go still.

"The judgment is vacated. The conviction is struck.

"You leave this room with no record of it, and the county will answer for the years."

Behind us, the dead man's daughter began to cry.

Callie did not move at first.

Then she reached back without turning around, and the daughter's hand was there to take hers.

Out on the courthouse steps, a few people with cameras waited.

Callie said nothing to them.

She stood on the walker for a moment in the winter light, and then she looked at me.

"Take me home," she said. "I have a form to fill in."

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