Chapter 214 Sentencing

Chapter 214 Sentencing

Anderson stayed that night.
He slept on the couch without asking. I covered him with a blanket from the armrest and went upstairs to my bedroom. I lay in the dark for hours, listening to the house settle and the clock in the hallway mark time that no longer felt urgent.
The verdict was in. The waiting was over. And the silence that replaced it was worse than anything that had come before.
I slept for two hours. Woke before dawn. Went downstairs and found Anderson already awake, sitting on the couch in the dark, staring at the wall.
We watched the sunrise from the back porch.
The three weeks between the verdict and sentencing passed in a blur of legal briefings and media requests and a quiet, grinding exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch.
Lancaster's office called twice a week. Updates on sentencing preparation. Prosecution's recommendation. Victim impact statement coordination. I answered every call, took notes, and filed them in the same folder I'd been building since this started.
Anderson and I saw each other most days. Not every day. The pattern from verdict week, the constant proximity, the hands finding each other, the shared silences, had settled into something less desperate and more deliberate. He'd come to the estate in the evenings. We'd eat dinner that he brought or food I'd ordered. We'd sit in the living room and talk about things that weren't the trial, or we'd say nothing at all.
He never went to the study again. Never asked to. That room had belonged to one night, and we both understood it wasn't meant to be repeated.
I prepared my victim impact statement on a Tuesday afternoon, sitting at the kitchen island with a legal pad and a pen that ran out of ink halfway through the first draft. I switched to a pencil and kept writing.
Lancaster had called it "the most important speech you'll give." I told him it wasn't a speech. It was a list of things Eugenia had taken from me, written in order of severity, read aloud in a courtroom so a judge could decide how long she'd spend in a cell.
He didn't correct me.
The morning of the sentencing was warm. Mid-May in Seattle. A day that made the city feel like a different place, sunlight off the water, green pushing through every surface, the air carrying the smell of cut grass and salt from the Sound.
I wore black.
Anderson picked me up at seven thirty. He was in a dark navy suit, the same no-tie look from verdict day. His face was thinner than it had been three weeks ago. He'd lost weight. I hadn't mentioned it. Neither had he.
"Ready?" he asked when I got in the car.
I looked at the legal pad on my lap. My statement, rewritten four times.
"No," I said.
"Neither am I."
The courthouse was swarmed. More media than the verdict. The sentencing of Eugenia Ellsworth had become the kind of event that drew national coverage and international attention, the wealthy matriarch who'd ordered six murders and shown no remorse, and the courtroom was standing room only by the time we arrived.
We entered through the back. Bernard was waiting inside with Thomas, who looked like he'd slept about as well as I had, which was not at all.
"How's your mother?" I asked Thomas.
"She's here. Upstairs." He paused. "She said she wouldn't miss this for anything."
Mary Morrison sat in the gallery already, front row, her hands in her lap. She'd brought a photograph. I saw the edge of a frame pressed against her thigh. Her father. She'd carried him into the courtroom.
Other families filled the rows behind us. Amanda Preston. Janet Shaw. Names I'd learned during the coalition building, faces I'd seen in the courthouse hallway for six weeks of trial and five days of deliberation.
Eight families had prepared statements. Lancaster had coordinated the order. Thomas would go first. Mary second. Amanda third. Janet Shaw fourth. Four other families whose names had appeared in the evidence but whose stories I knew less intimately. I would go last.
Anderson had been permitted a brief statement. Not as a victim. As the defendant's son who'd testified against her. Judge Caldwell had approved it over Graham's objection.
At nine AM, Judge Caldwell entered.
"All rise."
We stood, and then we sat.
Eugenia was brought in through the side door. Federal marshals on either side. She wore a gray suit today, not cream. Her hair was still styled. Her posture still perfect. But something was different. The pearls were gone. Whether she'd chosen to leave them off or they'd been confiscated, I didn't know. Without them, her neck looked bare and exposed in a way that made her seem older.
She sat at the defense table with Graham beside her. 
Judge Caldwell addressed the courtroom.
"We are here for sentencing in United States versus Eugenia Ellsworth. Before I impose sentence, the court will hear victim impact statements. The prosecution has coordinated eight statements from victim families, followed by a statement from the defendant's son. The defendant will also be given an opportunity to address the court."
She looked at Lancaster. "You may proceed."
Lancaster stood. "The prosecution calls Thomas Howard."
Thomas rose from the gallery. He walked to the podium set up between the prosecution table and the jury box. He carried a single sheet of paper, folded once.
He unfolded it. Looked at it. Then set it down and spoke without reading.
"My name is Thomas Howard. I'm thirty-six years old. On September twelfth, 2004, when I was fourteen, my father, Richmond Howard, was murdered in our home. I found him."
The courtroom was silent.
"For twenty-two years, I believed he killed himself. I grew up carrying that. The shame of it. The confusion. The anger at a man I thought had chosen to leave us."
His voice was steady. The voice of someone who'd practiced this in front of a mirror until the emotion was contained, but present.
"Recently, I learned the truth. My father didn't take his own life. He was murdered by a professional killer hired by the woman sitting at that table. Because he refused to sell a piece of property she wanted."
Thomas looked at Eugenia. She didn't look back.
"My father was a good man. He built a company. He coached my baseball team. He helped me with homework every night. He was teaching me to drive when she decided he was an obstacle."
He paused. The pause lasted long enough for the courtroom to feel his breathing.
"Every birthday, he missed. Every graduation. My daughter's birth. The moments a father is supposed to see. She took all of them. For a piece of real estate."
He looked at Judge Caldwell.
"You can't give me back my father. No sentence does that. But you can make sure she never takes another father from another fourteen-year-old boy. That's all I'm asking."
He picked up the paper he hadn't read from. Folded it and walked back to his seat.
His mother was crying silently beside Mary Morrison.
Lancaster called Mary next.
She walked to the podium holding the framed photograph. She set it on the podium facing the courtroom. Her father. James Morrison. Smiling. Holding a young girl.
"My name is Mary Morrison," she said. "Legally, Mary Berlette. I've used that name for twenty-two years because using my real name meant being found. Being found meant being killed."
Her voice was quiet but clear.
"I was twelve when my father disappeared. I didn't find a body. There was no funeral. One day, he went to work, and he didn't come home. My mother and I waited three days before the police told us he was dead."
She touched the edge of the photograph.
"We ran after he died. My mother and I. Two years later, my mother died. Cancer, the doctors said. I think it was grief. My aunt raised me after that. Changed my name to Berlette, her surname, because she believed Eugenia would kill me too if she knew I existed. I grew up as someone else because being Mary Morrison meant being a target."
Mary looked at the defense table. Eugenia's hands were still folded.
"I spent twenty years in hiding. Afraid to use my name. Afraid to be visible. Afraid that if I stopped running, she'd finish what she started."
She paused.
"My father loved us. He built something with his hands. He was proud of it. And she took him because he wouldn't give it to her."
Mary picked up the photograph and held it against her chest.
"I'm done hiding. I'm done being afraid. And I'm done being Mary Berlette. My name is Mary Morrison. My father was James Morrison. And he deserved better than what she gave him."
She walked back to her seat. Thomas Howard's mother put an arm around her.
Amanda Preston went next. Her anger was different from Thomas's control or Mary's quiet grief. Amanda was fire.
"My father, Charles Preston, built a tech company from nothing. He was an inventor. A creator. The kind of person who stayed up until three AM because he had an idea he couldn't let go of."
She gripped the podium.
"Eugenia Ellsworth stole his patents. When he fought back, she had him killed. Disappeared, they said. Missing person. Cold case. Twenty-three years of not knowing if my father was alive or dead somewhere."
Her voice rose.
"She treated people like insects. Swatted them when they got in her way. My father wasn't an obstacle. He was a human being. He was my dad. He read me bedtime stories and made pancakes on Saturday mornings, and the last thing he said to me was 'see you after school, kiddo.'"
Amanda's composure cracked. She wiped her eyes hard with the back of her hand.
"Lock her away forever because people like her don't stop. They don't feel guilt. They don't change. The only thing that stops a predator is a cage."
She left the podium without looking at anyone.
Janet Shaw was calmer.
"My husband, Elijah, had a heart attack during hostile takeover proceedings in 2019. Everyone said it was stress. Natural causes. Bad luck."
She spoke like someone delivering a eulogy she'd given before.
"It wasn't luck. Medical examination proved induced cardiac arrest. Someone poisoned my husband and made it look natural. And the woman who ordered it sat on the same charity boards as our family. Attended the same galas. Sent flowers to his funeral."
Janet looked at Eugenia.
"She sent flowers. To the funeral of a man she murdered."
The courtroom absorbed that.
"Elijah was sixty-one. He was planning retirement. We were going to travel. See the grandchildren more. He had a list of places he wanted to visit. I found it in his desk after he died."
She held up a folded piece of paper.
"The list is still on my nightstand. I look at it sometimes. All those places he'll never see. Because she decided his company was worth more than his life."
Four more families followed. Each one a different wound. Each one a different way of saying the same thing. She took someone from us. She did it without remorse. And we carry it every day.
By the time Lancaster called my name, the courtroom was heavy with accumulated grief. Thirty minutes of testimony from people whose lives had been broken by the woman sitting ten feet from the podium with her hands folded and her face blank.