He climbed into the chair beside me, took both my shaking hands in his small ones, and leaned his head against my arm.
“I kept the notes safe, Mom,” he whispered.
“He couldn’t take that away from us.”
Chapter 11 — The Handcuffs
The sound of the handcuffs closing was the sweetest sound I had heard in two years.
Lyle did not leave that courtroom the way he had entered it.
The ease was gone.
His jacket had gone rumpled, his composure had cracked straight down the middle, and the expensive watch was still on the wrist that a county deputy now drew firmly behind his back.
Dunmore was already shoveling papers into his briefcase, physically angling his body away from the client who had just turned a custody hearing into a crime scene.
“This is a misunderstanding,” Lyle said toward the bench, and his voice had climbed into a register I had never heard from him — thin, and cracking, and afraid.