I Hid Your Triplets, Why Did They Crash Your Engagement novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Exhibit Nine

The courtroom smelled of floor polish and old coffee.

Rafe sat on my left. My mother sat behind me with her purse in her lap, and behind her, to my surprise, sat Rafe's mother.

Daphne came in last, in a cream suit, with her own lawyer and her hair pinned back.

She looked rested. That was the worst part.

"Ms. Marsden petitions for visitation as the children's godmother," the judge said, reading. "She also alleges that Ms. Eastlake knowingly accepted funds and concealed the children for six years."

The judge was a gray-haired woman with half-glasses and no patience.

"Ms. Marsden's counsel. Proceed."

Daphne took the stand and put her hand on the Bible.

She told it beautifully.

She said she had loved me since college. She said I had called her at night, afraid, and had asked her to take the check so that nobody would know. She cried at exactly the right place.

"And the text message, Ms. Marsden?"

"Margot thanked me for the money," Daphne said. "She wrote that she'd never forget what it did for us."

My lawyer rose for cross-examination.

He was not the tall tired one who had sat at my kitchen table. Rafe's mother was paying for someone younger to stand up for me, and he walked briskly.

"Ms. Marsden, whose name is on the back of the check?"

"Margot's."

"And whose handwriting?"

"Hers."

"Ms. Eastlake, would you write your name for the court?"

He handed me a marker and a sheet.

I wrote my name on it in capitals, slowly, in front of the whole room.

"Your Honor," the young lawyer said, "I'd like to enter Ms. Eastlake's driver's license, her vet-tech registration, and a letter to her landlord. All three are signed in block print."

"Noted."

"And I'd like to enter exhibit nine."

A screen came down at the side of the room.

It showed a grainy still from a bank camera. A teller's window. The date stamp read July the sixth, six years ago.

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