Chapter 13: Trial Weather
Trial weather settled over Pinecrest Heights—reporters at the gate, drones returned by security like invasive birds, neighbors suddenly fond of morning walks past the wall.
Spencer instituted a rule: Charlee did not watch the news. Dexter did not go to the gate. Florence handled one interview by saying, “I cleaned this family’s floors while they cleaned their stories,” and then refusing to perform further. The clip circulated. Spencer let it.
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In court, prosecutors walked the jury from clinic password to dumpster coordinates. Julian’s face held the pale anger of a man who had expected the house to protect him forever. When Charlee’s existence entered the record as kinship, not gossip, Julian’s attorney tried to make her a spectacle. The judge cut it off. Spencer’s testimony lasted forty minutes and felt like years. He said he had believed he could not have children. He said a child had been left like refuse at his boundary. He said he had signed the papers to keep both children inside warm walls. Cross-examination tried to paint him as a man buying narrative control. He said narrative control was Julian’s hobby. The jury watched the thumbs-up text on a screen.
Charlee asked that night if Julian would come back. Spencer said the law was building a door without a fob for him. Charlee slept with the teddy bear under her chin. Spencer checked the monitor and the locks and, for once, slept too.
