Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Presiding Judge began reading the first charge.

"Charge One: When the mother fell critically ill and required hospitalization, the defendant neither contributed financially nor visited her in person. Defendant, do you plead guilty?"

I licked my chapped lips. Even without looking in a mirror, I knew my face was deathly pale.

"Not guilty," I answered.

My voice was raspy, but the microphone amplified it clearly through the entire chamber.

"Very well. Displaying the plaintiffs' submitted evidence to reconstruct the timeline."

The court first projected the sequence of events based on my family's selective memories before probing mine.

The giant screen rewound to three years ago. My mother had jaywalked across a busy intersection and was struck by a car. Because she had run a red light, the driver bore no liability, leaving our family with massive out-of-pocket bills.

In the emergency room, my mother groaned in agony from a fractured leg, sweat beading across her forehead.

Landon rushed in from his private prep school, while my father returned from the billing counter looking completely defeated.

"There's not enough money in the checking account. Call Gavin and tell him to wire the cash immediately."

Landon dialed my number, his voice frantic with urgency. "Gavin, Mom got hit by a car! You need to bring money to the hospital right now!"

Over the line, my muffled voice crackled back. "I can't make it over right now, the thing is―"

Before I could finish, the line went dead.

Landon slammed his phone onto the table in rage, turning to our mother. "He said he's not coming, and he won't give us a cent. How could I have such a heartless brother?"

My mother burst into inconsolable sobs. "I broke my back raising him for so many years! How did I raise such a monster? I could be dying here, and he won't even look at me!"

The gallery of relatives erupted in fury, pointing self-righteous fingers at me.

"Gavin, do you even have a shred of decency left? When you had that deadly fever as a toddler, your family was dirt poor, and your mother carried you on her back for miles in the dead of winter to find a clinic. Now that you're grown, this is how you repay her?"

A fever in my childhood?

I let out a bitter, silent scoff. My mother truly was a master actress.

I had gotten that fever because she had abandoned me to gamble at an illegal card room all day. When I told her I felt burning hot, she had kicked me under the table, hissing viciously in my ear.

"Stop ruining my luck, you little jinx! Go home! Complaining over every tiny sniffle―why can't you be tough like other boys?"

I had trudged home alone, curling under the blankets in a half-conscious daze.

When she finally returned hours later, she did not even glance at my bed; instead, she tiptoed over to Landon's crib, planting a tender kiss on his forehead.

If my aunt had not dropped by unexpectedly and felt my scorching skin, I would have died in that room.

Yet in front of neighbors, my mother instantly put on a show of maternal devotion. Even when my aunt offered to drive us in her car, my mother pretended not to hear, scooping me up and sprinting down the street so everyone would witness her dramatic sacrifice.

The neighbors praised her for years as the most dedicated mother alive.

No one remembered the doctor scolding her for bringing me in on the brink of permanent brain damage.

Back then, she could not explain why her toddler had been left with nothing to eat and only ice water to drink while she gambled.

Now, back in the courtroom, she shot me a smug, triumphant look, convinced I had no way out. After all, it was a documented fact that I had neither visited her bedside nor paid her medical bills that day.

My parents truly were cunning at cherry-picking facts that painted them as victims.

My mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, playing her tragic part for the gallery and cameras.