Eight Months Pregnant, My Husband Locked Me in a Freezing Cabin for His Ex on Christmas Eve novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Hearing

The courtroom held ninety people, and a hundred and ten were inside it.

They stood along the back wall and sat on the radiators.

Half of them held the flyer.

"Joyce did us a favor," the lawyer murmured, as we took our seats at the front. "Nobody in town could resist a scandal. Now they're all here to watch it."

I sat between her and Eli.

Rhonda sat behind me with Whitney, who had a bandage on her hand and her chin up.

On the other side of the aisle, Joyce sat in a navy suit with a pearl brooch, and her smooth silver bob looked freshly set.

She had slept in a bed.

She turned her head and smiled at me, as if we were meeting for lunch.

I looked away first, and I hated that I did.

The magistrate came in at nine sharp.

He was a heavy man with a golf tan, and he did not look at anyone, which was how I knew he was nervous.

"We are here on the petition of Neil Garver," he said. "Is the petitioner present?"

"He is present," the lawyer said, standing. "He'd like to address the court. Not as petitioner. As a witness against his own petition."

A sound ran across the room.

Joyce's smile stayed where it was.

"This is irregular," the magistrate said.

"It's also a petition to take a four-pound infant off oxygen," the lawyer said. "I think the court can bend."

Neil walked to the stand with his head down.

He swore the oath, and his voice shook on the word *truth*.

"Mr. Garver," the lawyer said. "Did you read the psychiatrist's letter before you signed the petition?"

"No."

"Did your mother tell you what it said?"

"She said it was a safety form. She said it was in case my wife was tired after the baby."

"Did you know it was dated three days before the birth?"

"No."

"Do you know why it was?"

"Yes." He looked at his mother. "Because she had already decided."

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