Chapter 6
The trial started three months later.
The media was everywhere.
Cameras lined the steps of the courthouse.
Reporters shouted questions at me every time I walked in.
“Mr. Carter! Did you really have no idea your wife was planning to kill you?”
“Mr. Carter! How does it feel to be betrayed by the woman you loved?”
“Mr. Carter! Is it true you’re adopting the little girl who saved your life?”
I ignored them all.
Marcus walked next to me, a human wall between me and the cameras.
Lila was supposed to testify.
Her therapist had said she was ready.
But the night before, she’d crawled into my bed, shaking.
“I can’t do it,” she’d whispered. “What if she gets out? What if she comes after me?”
I’d held her all night.
I’d told her she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to.
I’d told her I’d protect her, no matter what.
But when the prosecution called her name the next morning, she stood up.
She squeezed my hand once.
And she walked to the witness stand.
I held my breath the whole time she testified.
She was small in the big chair.
Her feet didn’t touch the floor.
But her voice was steady.
She told the court about seeing Tom get kidnapped.
She told them about warning me by the gate.
She told them about Olivia’s text.
She told them about Rick trying to break into Mrs. Hale’s house.
The jury was riveted.
Half of them had tears in their eyes.
Olivia’s lawyer tried to break her.
He stood up, smooth and smarmy.
“Lila,” he said. “You’re nine years old. Isn’t it possible you imagined some of this? Kids have very active imaginations, you know.”
Lila looked him dead in the eye.
“I didn’t imagine it,” she said, clear as a bell. “I saw it. And if I hadn’t, Mr. Carter would be dead. And you know it.”
The courtroom erupted.
The judge banged his gavel for order.
Olivia’s lawyer sat down, red-faced.
Lila stepped down from the stand.
She ran straight to me.
I picked her up and held her tight.
“You were amazing,” I whispered in her ear.
She buried her face in my neck.
“Is it over now?” she asked.
“Almost,” I said.
Rick testified the next day.
He told the jury every sordid detail.
Olivia’s gambling debts.
The embezzlement.
The plan to stage the car crash.
The order to kill Lila if she talked.
Olivia sat at the defense table, stone-faced.
She didn’t look at him once.
Her lawyer tried to paint Rick as a liar, a criminal who would say anything to get a lighter sentence.
But the damage was done.
The jury deliberated for six hours.
When they came back, the courtroom was dead silent.
The foreman stood up.
“We find the defendant, Olivia Marie Carter, guilty on all counts.”
A cheer went up from the gallery.
Olivia didn’t react.
She just stood there, cold and empty, as the judge sentenced her to twenty-five years to life in state prison.
No parole.
She was led out of the courtroom in cuffs.
She didn’t look at me once.
I walked out of the courthouse into the bright sun.
Lila was jumping up and down, holding Mrs. Hale’s hand.
Marcus was smiling.
Tom was there too, fully recovered, clapping me on the back.
Reporters swarmed us.
“Mr. Carter! How does it feel to have justice served?”
I looked down at Lila.
She was grinning from ear to ear.
For the first time in months, there was no fear in her eyes.
“It feels good,” I said. “It feels like we can finally breathe again.”
But as we drove away from the courthouse, a quiet sadness settled over me.
Justice was served.
Olivia was going to prison for a very long time.
But I still didn’t have a home.
The big estate in Boston felt like a tomb.
Every room held a memory of Olivia.
Every corner held a lie.
I didn’t want to go back there.
I wanted something new.
May you like
Something real.
Something safe.
