Chapter 3

The crowd leaned in, whispering.

"What's actually in that basement? To scare him like that?"

"Has to be the old woman's retirement savings. These ungrateful brats even snatched her nest egg away from her. There's no justice in this world!"

My third brother smiled.

"What's down in that basement is a lot more interesting than any retirement fund."

Someone pressed him for more, but Sheila's lips only trembled. She didn't dare say another word.

That was when her card-game friend, Joyce Lawrence, shot up from the gallery and jabbed a finger at my eldest brother's face.

"Allan! You heartless thing! When you had a fever as a kid, who was it that carried you three miles to the hospital? She got blisters on her feet until they bled!"

Allan's eyes stayed cold. "Is that so? Did she also tell you why I had that fever?"

Joyce choked on the answer, then only got louder. "So she shut you up for two days. So what? You'd done something wrong! Boys need a firm hand. Look at you, you turned out fine, didn't you?"

Sheila's lawyer jumped in at once. "Even if my client's methods were on the strict side, it came from love. And the defendants? How did they repay that love?"

He pulled up a video.

On the screen, my eldest brother stood watching Sheila Whitney flee from an attacking guard dog, and did nothing.

My second brother, my third brother and I watched, faces blank, as Sheila fell into a pit and broke her leg.

"The defendants deliberately set the dog on their foster mother, causing her to fall and break her leg. She lay there until she went into shock from blood loss, and only then was she pulled out by a passerby."

"And that pit was a trap the foster son, Allan Dickerson, kept ready for over a decade, all to take his revenge on her!"

The gallery exploded.

"What kind of hatred makes people do something this vicious?"

"Could there be some reason behind it?"

"Reason, my ass. These four are just born bad seeds! They should be dragged out and shot before they poison the whole world!"

A rotten cabbage leaf flew and hit me in the face.

An older woman in the gallery stood and screamed at me, pointing.

"My son must have been blind, to fall for a viper like you!"

"That woman raised you for over ten years! How could you turn on her?"

I wiped the sour slop off my face, expression flat.

"No blood between us. What kind of mother is that?"

At the plaintiff's table Sheila wept pitifully. "Ma'am, please don't blame Ivy. It's my fault, I'm just an embarrassment to her..."

"If she doesn't want to claim me, then fine, she doesn't have to..."

"I only ask that she leave me a way to live. A roof over my head, food to eat..."

People in the gallery began wiping their eyes.

"So cruel. They always say you raise children so they'll care for you in old age, and she can't even fill her stomach."

"Those four animals should cough up every cent and take care of their foster mother!"

"Exactly! Ruin them! Bring them down!"

The scene was completely out of control.

That was when the courtroom doors were shoved open.

A woman in heavy makeup walked in.

"Judge, I'm Ivy Dickerson's birth mother. I have something to say."

All three of my brothers frowned at once.

My head snapped up. What was she doing here?

The courtroom went silent in an instant, every eye fixed on the woman.

She stood in the witness box and looked down at me from above.

"My name is Moira Fox. Twenty years ago, I'm the one who left Ivy at the door of the children's home."

"She was born under a hard sign. Not three months old and she'd already jinxed her own father to death. When she was one, my business went under and I lost everything."

"A fortune-teller told me this girl was a jinx reborn, that whoever raised her would suffer for it. I had no choice. I had to get rid of her."

An uproar swept the gallery.

"She's not about to pull that whole broken-home routine, is she? Trying to shift the blame off her daughter?"

Moira Fox shot me a look of disgust and went on. "I dumped her at the children's home meaning to let her fend for herself, sink or swim. I never expected Sheila Whitney to adopt her."

"Ms. Whitney really is a good woman. She knew full well this girl was cursed to harm her own kin, and she still raised her."

"And who'd have thought she'd raise an ungrateful little snake!"