He Accused Me Of Stealing But I Heard The Truth Chapter 45
The jury took six hours.
When the verdict was read, I was holding the little paper boat Maisie had given me. Its edges were soft from being kept in my coat pocket for so long.
Fraud: guilty.
Identity theft and forgery: guilty.
Embezzlement: guilty.
Conspiracy related to the illegal clinic: guilty.
Rachel braced herself against the defense table. Before the judge had even finished reading, she turned toward Derek.
“You know why I did this.”
Derek didn’t look at her.
“I loved you for twelve years!”
The bailiff ordered her to be quiet.
Instead, she laughed, a high, unhinged sound.
“If you had just looked at me once back then, Erin would never have suffered like this. You’re the one who made the real choices.”
At last, Derek looked up.
“Yes,” he said, his voice low. “I chose not to ask. And I chose to believe you.”
“That’s why I lost them, and why I lost the life I had. But you don’t get to use my faults to excuse your crimes.”
Before sentencing, I submitted a victim impact statement.
I didn’t write that Rachel had stolen Derek from me.
Derek was never an object to be stolen. Every choice he made back then belonged to him alone.
Instead, I wrote about Maisie’s weight the first time she collapsed from hypoglycemia. I wrote about the age she was when she started asking why other children had fathers. And I wrote about that night beside the unmarked van, when I was ready to hand over my ID and my body just to get her medicine.