After Anna(60)

‘Just sit there being quiet. It’s when you talk you get in trouble.’

‘Ha.’ Noah forced a smile, knowing Thomas was trying to cheer him up.

‘Just keep on keepin’ on.’

‘It’s because Maggie –’ Noah started to say, then stopped himself. Thomas wouldn’t know that Maggie had been in the courtroom.

‘What about Maggie?’

‘I haven’t seen her yet. Have you?’

‘No, but Tim is keeping an eye out. She’s not there.’

‘Oh.’ Noah assumed that Maggie’s disguise was working, to a total stranger. ‘What bothers me is that they’re getting such a wrong picture of Anna, like she was perfect and wonderful. She was anything but.’

‘Noah, we’ve discussed this –’

‘But she was hardly sweet and innocent.’ Noah shook his head, disgusted. ‘That testimony about the night I lost my temper? I get why you objected, but I could’ve explained that. That was the day my patient died. It was awful.’

‘Were you negligent?’

‘Of course not.’ Noah recoiled.

‘What difference would that have made, that your patient died?’

‘I was upset that day, I wasn’t myself. Don’t you think that if they knew that shouting was atypical for me, that would make them question that I’m a control freak, intent on controlling Anna?’

‘You want to prove that you only yelled this one time and that Anna is manipulative?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s blaming the victim, and it never works. It’s the legal equivalent to speaking ill of the dead. In addition, it only gives you more of a motive to kill her. If she was ruining your family, you wanted to take revenge for that, or put a stop to it. When she filed for that PFA against you, the cat was out of the bag on your happy home life.’

‘We had a happy home until her.’

‘I can’t prove that unless you let me call Maggie.’

‘No.’ Noah felt frustrated, trying to make him understand. ‘They don’t know how selfish Anna really was. Like there was this one time, Maggie was going to make this nice Indian dinner, and I was going to apologize. We were sitting at the table waiting, and Anna doesn’t come home. Maggie’s calling everywhere, even hospitals. Anna didn’t call or answer Maggie’s texts.’

‘And?’ Thomas blinked, unimpressed.

‘And then she waltzes in late, saying she got a ride home, and that was that. No apology for not answering the texts.’

‘Noah, this is minor.’

‘But it’s indicative of who she really was. It was rude and selfish.’

‘You sound like a control freak right now.’

‘It’s not about control, it’s about what a family is. And she bullied Caleb, too. She told him to get out of her car when he touched the radio.’

‘My nephew does that. Drives me nuts.’

‘She was using us.’

‘For what?’ Thomas asked, skeptical. ‘What did she need from you? She had all the money in the world. She didn’t need anything from you guys.’

‘I could never figure that out.’ Noah racked his brain. ‘I have no answer.’

‘And that’s why it wouldn’t make sense to bring it up to a jury.’

‘They’re not understanding what it was like, living with her. She wanted her own rules.’

‘In other words, a typical teenager.’

‘It sounds that way, but it’s not. The only one she listened to was Maggie. We fought constantly over her. Caleb regressed because of the stress. She ruined our lives. She ruined our family.’

‘And you wanted to get her back for that, so you strangled her with your bare hands.’

Stunned, Noah didn’t say anything.

‘You have my point. That cannot be our theory of the case because it gives you ample motive, even more than the failed seduction. And it plays into the picture they’re painting of you as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’

Noah flashed on a bigger fight with Anna, when Anna had lied to him and Maggie about her friend Jamie, but Noah couldn’t prove it was a lie anyway. He wondered if she was a pathological liar or a sociopath, but it didn’t matter now. She couldn’t do him any more damage, and telling the truth would only convict him.

‘And a week after this was the barbecue, correct?’

‘Yes, the infamous barbecue.’ Noah realized that Maggie would probably be back in the courtroom because she would want to hear what he said about that night. ‘That was Maggie’s idea, too. She wanted to introduce Anna to our friends. Most of them didn’t even know she had a daughter. She’d been ashamed to tell anyone.’

‘Because she lost custody?’

‘Yes, it weighed on her.’ Noah thought back, pained. ‘Maggie has a soft heart, a wonderful heart. It killed her that she lost Anna. All Maggie wanted was to have Anna back, then the barbecue blew everything up.’

‘Linda’s going to get to that next.’

‘I figured.’ Noah dreaded it. ‘But then she’s finished with me, right?’

‘Not quite. She’s not done until you lose consciousness.’