Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
"Annabelle Holloway," Detective Miller said, walking down the center aisle of the courtroom. "You are under arrest for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, tampering with physical evidence, and grand theft in excess of five hundred thousand dollars."
Belle scrambled backward into the gallery row, knocking over a stack of legal briefs belonging to a spectator. "Get away from me! Mom, do something! Call Uncle Robert! Call the governor!"
"Hands behind your back, Miss Holloway," the detective said, his voice level and immovable.
The handcuffs clicked.
The sound—the cold, sharp *snick-snick* of the ratchets engaging—was the exact same sound I had heard in the hospital trauma bay while the blood was still running down my neck.
Belle thrashed against the officer’s grip, screaming curses that turned the heads of every person in the gallery. "You ruined my life! Laurel, you ruined everything! You were supposed to rot in there! You were supposed to die!"
The officers dragged her through the swinging mahogany gate, her designer shoes skidding across the waxed oak floor, her screams echoing down the hall until the heavy fire doors swung shut behind her.
Eleanor remained seated.
She sat entirely alone in the empty row.
Detective Miller’s partner, an older investigator named Santos, stepped up to Eleanor.
"Eleanor Holloway?"
My mother lifted her chin. She tried to maintain the posture of the grand dame of Sycamore Crest, but her hands were shaking so violently that her handbag slipped from her lap and spilled onto the floor.
Her compact, her lipstick, and a vintage fountain pen rolled across the wood.
"Eleanor Holloway, you are under arrest for perjury in an official proceeding and conspiracy to commit evidence tampering," Detective Santos said gently.
Eleanor did not scream. She did not struggle.
She stood up, offering her wrists to the metal cuffs with the hollow, defeated submission of a woman whose entire house of cards had collapsed into ash.
As Santos led her toward the aisle, she stopped beside my table.
She looked at me.
Her eyes were sunken, rimmed with red, searching my face for some lingering ember of the daughter who had spent thirty years trying to earn her approval.
"Laurel," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I... I was only trying to keep our family together. Belle... she needed me."
I looked at her.
The ringing in my right ear was still there—a permanent, high-pitched hum that I would carry for the rest of my days. A physical scar carved into my skull by the sister she had shielded, paid for by the mother who had tried to bury me alive.
"You didn't have a family, Eleanor," I said, my voice steady, quiet, and completely devoid of hatred. "You had a hostage."
Eleanor flinched as though I had struck her.
May you like
She opened her mouth to speak, but Detective Santos took her elbow and guided her down the aisle, through the doors, and into the holding cells below.
***
