Rapino told the jury that he and Rachel were going to get married and live happily ever after, until someone took her life. He said “someone” while glaring across the courtroom right at her, and there was nowhere for her to hide.
Then the prosecution rested its case, and now it was Attorney Navarro’s turn to present the defense.
He called eleven witnesses over five days in court. Mom, Jack, Ryan, and Annie all testified about her mental illness. They told stories of her life, including things about a cat, a rock, a girl named Ruby, and a boy named Troy. She remembers the day Troy came to the house, but only because she was so scared. He pointed at her and called her Chloe. He was so sure of it, too. Back then she didn’t know what was happening, but now she knows—she and Chloe are different but the same.
Dr. Mitch testified that she has DID, and that DID is a real condition. He said it was possible she was in a dissociative state when she killed Rachel, and played videos of her saying things she has no memory of saying. He used the words “brief, transient psychosis,” and talked of her medications. He showed the jury a drawing she made as Chloe—a drawing she doesn’t remember making.
She wishes the jury could climb into her mind, experience lost time the way she does. Then they’d believe, and they’d never want to go inside her head again. It’s so lonely and confusing in there. She wants to cry just thinking about it, but she knows the rule: don’t show any feelings.
She does have a vague awareness of being in the apartment on the night of Rachel’s murder, that knowing feeling at work, and looking out the window at a figure standing across the street. She checked again, and the figure was gone. Somehow she knows that figure was familiar to her. But who was it?
Now it’s her turn to talk. It is sweltering in the courtroom, no air-conditioning, a hard to breathe kind of hot. Sweat beads up her neck and drips down her back. The jury will think she’s nervous and they’ll be wrong. She’s not nervous. She’s utterly terrified. She wants Eve, the knowing tells her that she’d handle this better, or Ruby, but they won’t come. For reasons she doesn’t understand, they’ve abandoned her when she needs them the most. She looks back at her family. Jack sends her a thumbs-up sign. She looks at her attorney. He does the same.
The time has come to finally tell her story.
What little she knows of it.
Attorney Navarro, dressed in a sharp-looking blue suit, rises to his feet and says, “Your Honor, the defense calls Penny Isabella Francone to the stand.”
A murmur rises from the gallery that stops as suddenly as it starts with one strike of the judge’s gavel.
Attorney Navarro, too, has sweat on his forehead, and the collar of his shirt is stained with sweat as well.
This is a moment she thinks she’ll never forget—the tap of her shoes against the carpeted floor; the heat on the back of her head not only from the still air but from all the eyes watching her as she gets settled in the witness box.
“Please stand,” says a clerk.
She stands.
“Raise your right hand. Do you promise that the testimony you shall give in the case before this court shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” she says softly.
Attorney Navarro starts asking her questions. “Please state your full name for the record.”
Her heart is beating like a bass drum, so hard and fast she can’t believe the microphone isn’t picking up the sound. She says, “Penny Isabella Francone.” She answers each of Attorney Navarro’s questions one by one, mindful to keep her emotions under control just as she’d been told.
“I live at Edgewater State Hospital.”
“The court ordered me there.”
“I’ve been accused of murder.”
“I’ve been accused of killing Rachel Boyd.”
“Rachel Boyd is my birth mother.”
“Yes, I remember exchanging messages on Facebook with my birth mother.”
Those messages are put on a screen, and she confirms the ones she wrote and what Rachel wrote back.
“Yes, she invited me to come to her apartment and asked that I come alone.”
“I remember driving to Rachel’s on the night of the murder.”
“I took the car without asking. I had my driver’s license.”
“No, I don’t remember getting into any arguments with Rachel. I don’t remember seeing or talking to Rachel that night.”
“I don’t know if someone else was in the apartment with me or not.”