Chapter 4 — The Landlord

Carroway’s voice snapped me out of the memory.

“Your Honor,” the attorney said, his voice rising.

“We have established the mother’s erratic employment, which she lost due to misconduct. We have established her financial ruin. But to fully illustrate the squalid conditions the child is subjected to, I call our next witness.”

He gestured toward the heavy oak doors at the back of the courtroom. “We call Mr. Thomas Abernathy.”

My blood ran cold. The doors swung open, and an older man in a wrinkled brown suit shuffled down the aisle. It was my landlord. Why was he here?

Thomas Abernathy complained about everything, but he’d always been relatively kind to me, sometimes giving me an extra week to gather rent when things were unbearably tight.