He looked disappointed by the answer.
I finished without making a speech. I wanted my words to be accurate enough that nobody needed to remember how I sounded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE — Brooke Takes the Stand
Brooke entered the courtroom on the second afternoon wearing a blue blouse and shoes that squeaked faintly against the polished floor. She didn’t look toward Dylan. I wondered whether she’d been told not to, or whether she simply couldn’t bear it.
She testified about the plan. The idea had begun as a conversation after the party: Dylan wanted to embarrass me because I wouldn’t let him drive the Lamborghini, because I owned something he wanted, and because he’d convinced himself I was pretending to be successful. They discussed making a video. She agreed to film. Vivienne had been awake early and heard them talking.
“Did Mrs. Hargrove try to stop you?” the prosecutor asked.
“No.”
“What did she say?”
Brooke swallowed. “She told him to make sure the word could be read on camera.”
The prosecutor played the video Brooke had provided. It showed Dylan walking toward the garage, checking whether the door was locked, and turning to the car. He held the can with both hands while Brooke framed the shot.
I watched the faces in the jury box. A few jurors frowned. One looked down at her notepad. Nobody appeared entertained.
The defense challenged Brooke’s credibility. She had lied to the first officers about filming. She had participated in the plan. She hadn’t come forward voluntarily until she understood the seriousness of the case.
All of that was true.
“Yes,” she said repeatedly. “I lied. Yes, I filmed it. Yes, I laughed.”
When asked why she changed her account, she looked toward the judge rather than the lawyers.
“Because I kept watching the video,” she said. “At first it was something funny we were going to post. Then I watched him come outside. He didn’t yell. He just looked at the car, and I realized we’d done something terrible to a person.”
Her voice shook, but she continued. “I still didn’t tell the truth immediately. I was scared. That’s my responsibility.”
I appreciated that she didn’t turn the moment into a plea for admiration. She had done wrong. She was admitting it.
During a break I passed her in the hallway. She stood beside her attorney, staring at a vending machine.
“Mr. Bennett,” she said as I approached.
I stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t add an explanation. I could tell she’d rehearsed more words and abandoned them.
“Thank you for telling the truth,” I said.
It wasn’t forgiveness. It was the one thing I could give her that day without lying about how I felt.
She nodded and turned back toward the vending machine.
CHAPTER THIRTY — One Word in Red
The video of Vivienne on the porch was the most difficult evidence to watch, not because it was graphic but because it was ordinary.
She stood in a comfortable robe, holding coffee. She watched her son coat my car with red paint. She smiled when he struggled with the letters. At one point she said, “Make it bigger.” The words were casual. The kind of thing a mother might say while watching a child decorate a birthday banner.
The contrast made the scene worse.
The defense argued that Vivienne’s words didn’t prove anything about Dylan’s original intention. The prosecution focused on what the recordings showed and what they didn’t. The judge instructed the jury not to use the evidence for purposes it couldn’t legally support.
