Chapter 13: The Witness Stand

The courtroom on Thursday smelled of floor wax and cold coffee.

Winslow had told the night nurse about my fingers at two in the morning.

She checked my eyes and my chart and said it was a reflex, not waking.

He nodded, and kissed my knuckles, and did not argue.

Then he walked to court with the hope of it folded small in his chest.

I rode in the coat across Winslow's knees.

Sybil sat at the other table in her pearls, with Wesley at her elbow in a new suit.

Her lawyer stood up and opened the notebook, the photographed copy, to the first page.

"Entry two," he read. "Said her brother-in-law was spending her money."

He turned the page.

"Entry three. Said the cook put nuts in her dinner."

He read all the way to the ninety-ninth.

"Said she was dying."

Nobody in the room made a sound.

My husband's handwriting was being read to strangers, and it was my pain they were reading.

"Your Honor," the lawyer said, "a husband does not write ninety-nine entries about a sane wife."

Sybil touched a tissue to her dry eye.

Winslow's lawyer rose.

"We call the cook."

The woman came down the aisle in her church coat, holding a plastic bag against her chest.

She did not look at the family table.

She took the oath in a voice that shook and then steadied.

"Mrs. Holloway told me to put walnut paste in the daughter-in-law's food," she said. "Seven times."

"That is a lie," Sybil said.

"Sit down, Mrs. Holloway," the judge said.

The cook opened the bag.

She laid seven plain envelopes on the rail, each with a number written on the flap.

"She paid me cash after every one," she said. "I kept the envelopes. Her handwriting is on them."

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