"The thing is," Maddie announced like delivering a State of the Union, "he wanted to. You could see it. That's the part I'll be taking to my grave and giggling about from inside the coffin."
The limousine glided on through the gold afternoon, and the back of it had long since stopped pretending to be a vehicle and become, instead, a courtroom — one in which Marcus Heavenchild was being tried, convicted, and sentenced in absentia for roughly the eleventh time that hour.
The defense had not shown up or expected.
"He squared up," Maddie went on, miming it with her whole upper body, shoulders rolling back, chin lifting into a truly hideous impression of patrician outrage. "He turned. He took the breath: the little aristocratic inhale a man does right before he says something he's convinced will be devastating—"
"—and then nothing came out," Delilah finished, grinning into her drink.
