The Day I Died Twice Chapter 10

The Day I Died Twice Chapter 10

I reached the courthouse steps the next morning before the press did.

Marissa was being deposed—not arrested, deposed, handled as the cooperating witness whose confession had broken the case open. But Harriet’s warning kept ringing in my ears: She’s still loyal to Nathaniel.

I’d believed Marissa’s tears at the lake. I’d believed her terror was real.

But I, of all people, knew how skilled people could be at performing for a verdict.

I caught the prosecutor, Gloria Nwosu, in the hallway and asked for five minutes.

“Mrs. Thorne, you shouldn’t be here. You’re a victim and a witness—”

“I think Marissa’s going to recant,” I said. “I think she’s going to claim I coerced her confession. That I threatened her at the lake. That the bracelet was a gift and the rest was my paranoid delusion.”

Gloria went still. “Why would you think that?”

Because in my last life, this exact maneuver had worked. Not with Marissa—but with Nathaniel, who’d pivoted from grieving husband to shattered accuser without blinking and sold it to an entire jury. They were good at it, these people.

—

They knew a confession could be unspun if you wept prettily enough.

“Because she loves him,” I said. “And love makes people do unforgivable things. Trust me. I married the proof.”

Gloria studied me. “If she recants, your texts and the recording still stand. The insurance policy stands.”

“The defense will say I fabricated them. They’ll say I’m the unstable wife who set up her own husband out of jealousy. It’s the story he built for a year—” I caught myself. “It’s the story he’s been building. A jury loves a tragic man more than it loves a difficult woman.”

Gloria’s expression sharpened, slow and deliberate. “You’ve thought about this a great deal.”

“I’ve thought about nothing else.”

She came to a decision. “Come with me. But you don’t speak. You observe.”

The deposition room had a one-way window. I stood behind it and watched my husband’s mistress sit down, fold her hands, and lift her chin.

And then, precisely as Harriet had warned, Marissa Bauer opened her mouth and changed her story.

“I’d like to correct my statement from the night of the incident,” she said softly. “I was frightened. Celeste Thorne threatened me at the lake. She told me she’d kill me if I didn’t

—

say her husband was planning something. The bracelet was a genuine gift. I never saw any plan. I think—” a delicate, devastating pause “—I think Nathaniel’s wife is very, very ill.”

There it was.

The knife, sliding back between my ribs, in another life that hadn’t even happened yet.

I felt the old panic surge, the courtroom-cell-death spiral.

And then I felt something else.

Because this time, I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t ambushed, and I wasn’t a lamb walking into a lake.

This time, I had a sister who’d spent two years learning every secret these people kept.

My phone buzzed against my palm.

A video file. From Harriet.

Show Gloria this. Marissa filmed herself. She films everything. She never deletes anything. It’s how she controls him. — H

I rapped on the glass.

Gloria stepped out. I held up the phone.

“Before she finishes lying,” I said, “you need to see what your witness recorded the night before the lake.”