I Signed Away Eight Million To Leave Him Chapter 41
On the other end of the line, my lawyer paused.
“An appeal doesn’t mean a new trial.”
“He can’t walk back into court with a different story and ask another jury to listen. The appellate court will only review the original trial record for legal or procedural errors.”
I held the phone and looked out the library window.
A few students were sitting under the trees, reading.
They were arguing fiercely over the ending of a comic book, with no idea that another ending had just reached out and caught me by the sleeve.
“What are his grounds?”
“He’s claiming too much time had passed, so your memory as a child witness was unreliable. He’s also arguing that the media storm Sloane created tainted the jury and denied him a fair trial.”
I wasn’t surprised.
The first time my father appeared on camera, he had called me a liar.
Now that Sloane had publicly retracted her claims, he was still trying to climb out on the lies she had left behind.
“There’s one more argument,” my lawyer said. “He claims the line he said on the stand—‘I just wanted her to shut up’—was an emotional outburst and shouldn’t have been treated as an admission.”
“But he said it himself.”
“Yes. The prosecutor didn’t force him, and he insisted on testifying. The record is very clear.”
I lowered my eyes and touched the edge of the desk.
“What do you need from me?”
“For now, nothing.”
That answer caught me off guard.
Every other time someone had hurt me, I had needed to bring out photographs, texts, court orders, waivers—something to prove I wasn’t lying.
This time, the truth was already in the court record.
It didn’t need me to bleed again to be believed.
But the next afternoon, my father’s appellate attorney still sent over a statement.
It said that I had been too young to see the “final blow that caused the death.”
Every word on the page was technically true.
Put together, they were meant to erase the locked door, the blood on my mother, and my father’s flight before dawn.
At the bottom was a blank line for my signature.
If I signed, they would fold it into the appeal.
My lawyer asked, “Do you want me to send it back untouched?”
“No.”
I turned the statement over.
“Attach my original police statement, my trial testimony, and his testimony, page by page.”
Then, in the blank space, I wrote my reply:
“I did not see the final blow, but I saw the whole night.”
“I refuse to sign.”