Chapter 13 - THE GIRL WHO TESTIFIED
Elena testified at Sofia’s appeal when she was eleven.
Sofia’s lawyers claimed the childhood identification was unreliable.
They argued medication, trauma, and suggestion had shaped Elena’s memory.
Elena entered the courtroom wearing a dark purple dress.
Bruno walked beside her as a certified support animal.
He had become slower.
Gray fur covered his muzzle.
He still watched every door.
Sofia smiled when she saw him.
“Still trusting the animal?”
Elena looked at the judge.
“Can she talk to me like that?”
“No,” the judge said.
Sofia’s smile disappeared.
Elena described the blue truck.
The crying girls.
Marco’s gun striking her head.
Sofia’s face above the road.
Then the hospital.
She remembered Dr. Crane telling a nurse to increase the medication.
She remembered hearing her mother cry outside a closed door.
She remembered being unable to move.
The prosecutor asked whether she knew she had been placed in a coffin.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I could hear the funeral music.”
Rosa began crying in the gallery.
Elena continued.
“I heard my mom say goodbye.”
“I tried to move my fingers.”
“I thought she would see.”
“But the medicine made me too heavy.”
“What happened when Bruno entered the room?”
“I heard his nails on the floor.”
“Then he touched the coffin.”
“I scratched back.”
The courtroom became completely silent.
Sofia’s attorney approached carefully.
“You were unconscious for much of that time.”
“I couldn’t move.”
“That is not the same as unconscious.”
“Doctors say memory during sedation can be unreliable.”
Elena looked toward Bruno.
“Dogs can be unreliable too.”
The attorney seemed relieved.
Then Elena continued.
“But Bruno was right.”
The appeal was denied.
Afterward, Elena visited me in prison with Tomas.
She sat across the glass and lifted the phone.
“You look old.”
“I am old.”
“My dad says you were old before.”
“Your father owes me an apology.”
She smiled.
Then she became serious.
“I remembered something else.”
“What?”
“Sofia said your name in the ambulance.”
“What did she say?”
“She told Dr. Crane that if I died, you would blame Harlan.”
“If I lived, she would blame Marco.”
“She said you only see the enemy someone puts in front of you.”
The sentence followed me back to my cell.
Sofia had understood my greatest weakness.
I believed suspicion was the same as insight.
I watched the person acting nervous.
I punished the man whose lie was easiest to prove.
I rarely looked at the person arranging the room.
Bruno had.
At the funeral, every human watched Marco because he looked afraid.
May you like
Bruno listened to the coffin.
That was why he found the truth first.
