Chapter 1 - The Half I Never Took Off
Detective Aaron Cole slammed the wooden box onto my evidence table hard enough to make every attorney in Courtroom Four stop talking.
THUD.
The box stayed closed.
The ten-year-old boy standing between two uniformed officers flinched.
I did not like that.
I brought my gavel down.
“Enough.”
Silence.
Cole pointed toward the boy.
“He was caught with this inside a restricted area.”
The boy looked terrified.
Not guilty.
There is a difference, and after twenty-three years on a bench, I had become suspicious of adults who pretended there wasn't.
“What is his name?”
“Noah Brooks.”
“Why is a ten-year-old standing in my courtroom between two police officers?”
“He wouldn't tell us where he got the box.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Cole's jaw tightened.
I knew Aaron.
Not well socially.
Very well professionally.
He had testified in my courtroom for almost fifteen years.
Calm detective.
Careful language.
The kind of witness prosecutors loved because he rarely gave defense attorneys anything unnecessary.
Today he was sweating.
I pulled the wooden box toward me.
“Judge—”
I flipped the latch.
Cole stopped.
Inside, on faded blue velvet, rested half of a gold laurel.
Not a pin.
Not a coin.
A broken piece of jewelry.
The left branch of a tiny wreath.
One jagged edge where the metal had been split decades earlier.
My hand began to tremble.
I heard somebody in the gallery whisper.
I did not look up.
I knew that gold.
Knew the small scratch across the third leaf.
Knew the dent near the broken edge.
My mother had dropped the original brooch on our kitchen tile when I was fourteen.
My brother Thomas had laughed.
She made him polish it afterward.
Thirty-one years ago, after she died, Thomas broke the laurel in half.
One piece for him.
One for me.
Then Thomas disappeared.
I had not seen his half since.
Cole reached toward the box.
I hit his hand away.
Not elegant.
Not judicial.
His arm jerked back.
I stood.
“Who gave you this?”
Noah stared up at me.
“A man.”
“What man?”
“I don't know his name.”
“Where?”
“He said I could only give it to you.”
My pulse hammered.
I stepped down from the bench.
Someone behind me said:
“Judge Carter—”
I ignored them.
I knelt several feet in front of Noah.
“Did he hurt you?”
Noah shook his head.
“Threaten you?”
“No.”
“Tell you to hide from police?”
“No.”
Good.
“Then why were you in the restricted hallway?”
“He said there was somebody there I could ask to bring me to you.”
Cole looked away.
Interesting.
I reached beneath the collar of my robe.
A thin chain came out.
I had worn it beneath clothes, suits, robes, hospital gowns, and one terrible bridesmaid dress for more than thirty years.
The other half.
I removed it.
Placed it beside the piece from the box.
Click.
Not literally.
There was no mechanism.
But the broken edges met perfectly.
One complete gold laurel lay across my palm.
My vision blurred.
Cole saw it.
His face emptied.
He took one step backward.
Noah noticed.
So did I.
“How did the man know I still had this?”
Noah looked at the necklace.
“He said you always would.”
Something inside me broke open.
Thomas had said almost the same thing the night he split the brooch.
You'll keep yours forever, Evie.
I had called him melodramatic.
He had said I was predictable.
“Noah.”
The boy looked at me.
“Did he call me Evelyn?”
“No.”
My breathing stopped.
“What did he call me?”
“Evie.”
Cole closed his eyes.
I turned toward him.
“Aaron.”
“Judge, we need to secure the box.”
“You recognized the laurel.”
“No.”
“You backed away.”
“Because you did.”
“Bad answer.”
His mouth tightened.
I looked at Noah again.
“What else did the man tell you?”
Noah hesitated.
“It's okay.”
“He said Detective Cole would try to take the box before you saw what was inside.”
Every face in the courtroom turned toward Aaron.
Cole's skin went pale.
I stood slowly.
Noah continued:
“He said if that happened…”
“What?”
The boy glanced at Cole.
“…ask him what his father did at 11:40.”
Aaron Cole stopped breathing normally.
May you like
His father had been Detective Samuel Cole.
And Samuel Cole had led the investigation into Thomas Carter's disappearance thirty-one years ago.
