It was so unfair.
Joey left Lexi’s room and made her way down the hall to the guest bedroom, which was beautifully decorated and completely impersonal. She found a toothbrush in the ensuite bathroom like Charles said she would—even the Baxters’ guests had a better life than she and Ruby did. She could understand why her mother would want to live here and be Charles’s wife. Under any other circumstances, Joey might have wanted to be Charles’s stepdaughter.
Except there was already one monster in the family.
She left Charles’s T-shirt in the bathroom, climbed into bed, and, still wearing all her own clothes, fell asleep.
* * *
The courtroom was so quiet that Joey could hear the rumbling of the bailiff’s stomach from six feet away.
“Did you stay asleep the entire night?” Duffy asked.
“No. I woke up when I heard a noise.”
“What time was that?”
“A little after one, maybe.”
“Walk us through what you did then.”
“I sat up,” Joey said. “The room was dark, so I turned a lamp on because I was a bit freaked out. And then I realized my mom and Charles were arguing. It went on for a little while, maybe ten minutes. And then my mom came into the guest room. She was upset.”
Joey paused, as Duffy had coached her to do. She had specific instructions to not rush this part. She counted to two, and then continued.
“She was holding a knife, the same one I saw Charles use to cut up the cheese from before. It was covered in blood. And so was she.”
She took a breath and held it. It felt like everyone in the courtroom was doing the same.
“What did your mother say to you?” Duffy prompted, just as they’d rehearsed.
“She said, ‘You have to help me. I killed him. Charles is dead.’”
There was a rustling in the courtroom. It came from the jury box, and Joey glanced over to see that most of the jurors were looking at Ruby. But there was one member who was still looking at Joey, and it was the same woman who’d smiled at her when she was first brought in. The woman wasn’t smiling now. Her face was full of sympathy, her eyes sad and moist.
“What happened then?” Duffy asked.
“She was hysterical and panicking. She wanted to leave. I told her we should stay and call the police, say it was accident, that she didn’t mean to hurt him. She said she didn’t want anyone to know what she had done. She said if we left right away, they might think someone broke in, like a robber or something. She kept pulling my arm, but I told her that if she didn’t want to call 911, then we had to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind. I mean, I know the police can check for fingerprints and all that, but I also knew my mom had been to his house at least a few times before. We just had to make sure nobody knew she had been there that night.”
Joey took another breath.
“I found a garbage bag under the bathroom sink. I told her to drop the knife in and said she should take off her dress and put that in the bag, too. She put on Charles’s old T-shirt, and I found a pair of sweatpants in one of Lexi’s drawers. And then I told her to go out the back entrance and get the car.”
“You told her to go?” Duffy already knew all this, but she said it in a tone of disbelief. “You, her thirteen-year-old daughter, told your mother to go?”
“I was scared she would make things worse. She wasn’t thinking straight. She was stumbling around and crying and saying things.”
“What did she say?”
“Things like, ‘Oh God, what did I do, what did I do?’ I just felt like it would be easier to try and clean up without her there. She finally left.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I brought the garbage bag into Charles’s bedroom. The door was wide-open and the lights were all on…” Joey’s voice trails off.
Duffy gives her the tiniest nod of approval. “Tell us what you saw, Joelle,” she said softly.
“I saw Charles lying on the floor on his side. There was blood everywhere, but most of it was on the carpet where he was. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving. He looked dead. I … I almost threw up…”
“That’s understandable. Go on.”
“I started picking up everything my mom left behind. Her purse was on the bedside table, and I found her lipstick in the bathroom by the sink. I didn’t know what to take, so I just took everything: the napkins, the forks, the wine bottle, her glass, which had her lipstick on it…”