The Price of Blind Trust and Cruel Coldness Chapter 09
Half a year later, the public gallery of the Municipal Criminal Court was packed with onlookers.
My mom sat in the front row. She had grown gaunt over the past six months, her hair turned entirely silver. But her gaze was steady, cold and clear.
The judge’s gavel crashed down sharply.
As the principal offender, Willa had committed premeditated murder with extreme cruelty. She was sentenced to death.
The instant the verdict was announced, Willa’s legs buckled. She collapsed onto the defendant’s bench.
She gripped the railing and screamed. “I refuse to accept this! I’m filing an appeal! Thomas made me do it! Why am I the one getting the death penalty?”
Bailiffs stepped forward to restrain her. She struggled wildly, her fingernails dragging bloody scratches across their arms.
As they dragged her out of the courtroom, she passed beside Thomas. She spat straight onto his face. “Thomas, you useless waste! I will never let you rest, even on the road to hell!”
Thomas did not wipe the spit off his skin. He sat rigidly on the defendant’s bench like a stone statue.
His hair had turned brittle and pale, his eye sockets sunken deep. He was gaunt beyond recognition.
Convicted as an accomplice to intentional murder, evidence tampering, and obstruction of justice, he received a life sentence.
The judge’s voice reading the verdict echoed through the courtroom. He heard not a single word.
His gaze drifted past the judge, across the gallery, and locked onto a tiny figure tucked into the far corner of the back row.
Antony.
Escorted by a child welfare caseworker, he had been permitted to attend only the sentencing. He wore an ill-fitting secondhand jacket, huddled tight in his seat. He hugged that same faded stuffed bear to his chest, eyes swollen, lips pressed firmly shut. He didn’t make a sound.
Thomas parted his lips, wanting to call out to him, yet something thick blocked his throat.
Antony never looked his way. Not once during the entire hearing.
After the trial adjourned, my mom walked past the defendant’s bench and stopped in front of Thomas.
She didn’t shout insults or strike him. She simply stared down at her former son-in-law.
She pulled Jennifer’s graduation portrait out of her pocket and set it gently on the table before him.
“Thomas.” My mom’s voice was hoarse and steady. “For the rest of your life, you will never deserve to see her smile again.”
She turned and walked out of the courtroom.
Thomas stared down at the familiar face on the photograph. Tears finally spilled over. But he no longer had any right to reach out and touch it.
Bailiffs stepped forward and cleared everything from the table, including the photo.
He was escorted out of the courtroom, walking down the long corridor.
Sunlight streamed through the high windows overhead. He lifted his head instinctively, and the brightness stung his eyes.
For one fleeting moment, he saw Jennifer again. She wore that same white sundress, standing amid the light, watched him silently.
“Jennifer…” He stretched out his cuffed hands. The vision shattered.
At the end of the corridor waited a dark gray prison transport van. The vehicle’s door slammed shut with a dull, icy thud.
During his first week in prison, Thomas refused food and water for three full days in his cell. Guards forced liquid nutrition down his throat just to keep him alive.
Every day he curled up in the corner, speaking to no one. He replayed fragments of old memories endlessly in his mind.
Jennifer heavily pregnant, simmering soup for him late at night.
Jennifer waking dozens of times each night to soothe a crying Antony, while he rolled over and slept on.
Jennifer quitting her high-paying job to raise their child full-time, while he complained she brought in no income.
The sound of Jennifer hammering desperately against the metal crate.
Those sounds were etched into his mind, indelible and inescapable.
He developed crippling insomnia. He woke screaming at the exact same hour every midnight, soaked in cold sweat.
His dreams swarmed with snakes. Thousands upon thousands of serpents slithered toward him from every direction, coiling around his limbs, his neck, slipping into his mouth and nostrils. He struggled violently but could not move an inch.
Then he would see Jennifer, standing outside the mass of snakes, staring at him with empty eyes. She said nothing. She only watched.
He jolted awake screaming, only to have his cellmate slam a pillow hard into his face. “Scream one more time and I’ll beat you half to death.”