After Eight Years, She Left Me at the Altar for Her First Love novel · Chapter 37 of 48

Chapter 37: The Charge

The holding cell had a steel bench, a steel toilet and a light that never went off.

Troy sat with his wrists still sore from the cuffs.

He did not mind the cell.

He minded that the last thing Hazel had seen was him being walked away.

"Falk," the older deputy said at the bars. "Visitor."

"I don't want one."

"This one's not asking."

Judith Wainright came down the corridor in her gray wool coat, with the leather folder under her arm.

That morning she had been led out of a courtroom in handcuffs.

Now her coat was pressed and her silver hair was in its knot.

"Bail is a wonderful thing," she said. "My lawyer had me out before lunch."

Troy stood up.

"You took my daughter."

"I removed my great-niece from a house that could not keep her."

"Greta ran for a boat with her."

"Greta is a grown woman." Judith's voice did not change. "A recording made in my home by a resentful girl proves very little."

"Your own voice said Switzerland."

"It said many things. I like to think aloud."

She stepped closer to the bars, and for the first time in twelve years she looked straight at him.

"No hands until she's home," Judith said.

She said it in his own flat tone, word for word, as she must have heard it on the stream.

"You swore it to your wife in the street. Eleven days later you tore a woman off a boat while a camera watched. I have the footage. Do you want to know what a judge hears when I play it?"

"A man catching his baby."

"A man who gives his word to his wife and breaks it at the first boat." She tilted her head. "Imagine what he does with a promise to a court."

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