Chapter 22: The Sentence

Rowan's POV

I wanted to kill him on the stage.

I want that said plainly.

Leland Penhallow knelt in front of my wife, in front of three hundred donors, and said her name.

My hands closed into fists at my sides.

Faye looked down at him for a very long time.

"Get up," she said.

"Faye, I..."

"Not tonight. You'll get your turn. Get up and go home."

He got up.

The guards took him out through the side door, and the room let out its breath.

She turned to me after.

Her hands were cold and her eyes were dry.

"Are you angry with me?" she asked.

"No."

"You wanted to hit him."

"I wanted to do worse than that." I took her hands. "You were better."

The sentencing came on the fourteenth day.

The courtroom was full to the walls.

Reporters filled the benches on the left.

Behind them sat a row of women in green coats and men in baseball caps, who had come by bus.

Faye's patients had taken the second row.

They had brought sandwiches.

My wife sat in front of me in a plain navy dress, with Tobias on her other side.

I sat at her left hand.

The bailiff called the room to order.

Leland came in through the side door in a grey jail shirt.

His hair had been cut short, and without the suit he looked younger and smaller than I had ever seen him.

He did not look at his father.

Edmund Penhallow sat alone at the back, in a coat he had worn to a funeral, with a lawyer on each side who would not meet his eye.

The judge read the list.

Leaving the scene of a collision causing serious injury.

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