Chapter 8 - The Verdict of the Cloud Shaped Pancakes
The trial lasted only four days. The jury didn't even ask for lunch before they came back with their decision.
"On the count of first-degree aggravated murder, we find the defendant, Diane Sterling... Guilty."
The judge, a stern man named Harrison, didn't offer any leniency during the sentencing phase. "You used the innocence of a child and the trust of your own sister to perpetrate an act of unimaginable cruelty. You turned a home into a laboratory of malice."
Diane was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, to be served at the maximum-security facility upstate. My mother, arrested two days later in Florida for complicity and conspiracy after the bank records were analyzed, received a ten-year sentence as an accessory before the fact.
When the courthouse doors opened after the final sentencing, the reporters swarmed the steps, their microphones thrust into my face.
"Ms. Miller! How do you feel about the verdict? Is justice served?"
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I stood on the stone steps, holding Connor’s hand tightly in mine. The winter air was clean, blowing away the lingering smell of the funeral lilies that had haunted my nose for months.
"Justice is a word for lawyers," I said into the cameras, my voice echoing across the plaza. "My daughter is not coming back. But my son is safe. The people who tried to break our home are behind bars, and from this day forward, their names will never be spoken in my house again."
