Page 79 of Z For Butterfly Man
“Not that I know of. Reagan’s dad no longer lived in that house, not since…last year. He had a stroke and moved to a nursing home. I didn’t see anyone else that night.”
Floyd walks to her table. “Thank you, Mr. Bloom. No further questions.”
The defense grills Mason, tears apart his testimony, even accuses him of murdering my mother himself. That’s what Shane has been saying. He did come to my room that night, with the intention to fuck me, but he saw Mason in my bed and got jealous. They got into a fight. Mother came in. She fought Mason, not Shane, and that was when Mason stabbed her with Shane’s knife.
Shane’s story says Mason and I staged the whole thing to frame Shane for murder. The defense even uses Shane’s exact words every time I’ve tried to tell the truth about what happened between us:she has an overactive imagination.
But, unlike me, Shane has never written a story in his life. He has learned nothing about substance, details and evidence.He doesn’t know how to weave a plot so tight it becomes so believable, far more believable than the truth.
Gonzales’s argument falls apart with every question. It’s Shane’s DNA that is found inside of me, not Mason’s. It is Shane’s fingerprints that are on the knife, not Mason’s. It is Shane who fled a crime scene like a chicken, not Mason.
Who has an overactive imagination now?
I sit in the witness box next, my hands folded in my lap to keep them from shaking. Floyd approaches me with the same careful professionalism.
“Miss Fletcher, Reagan.” Floyd’s voice cuts through the silence. “Can I call you Reagan?”
I nod.
“How do you know the defendant?”
Here goes nothing. I state the obvious. “Shane is…my brother.”
“And the victim?”
“Sadie Fletcher was my mother, our mother.” The woman who used me as her punching bag but never laid a hand on him. The monster who knew her son was fucking his sister and turned a blind eye but at the same time punished herwhoredaughter for it. The evil I banished in my stories over and over until it finally came true.
“Can you tell the court, in your own words, what happened on the night of March 15th?”
I take a breath. The air feels too thin, like there isn’t enough oxygen in the room. “I was in my bedroom.” Well, it was Shane’s bedroom before he left and joined the MC. Then it became the guest room. It only became mine when he forced Mother to let me have it. “It was late, around midnight, when I heard tapping on the window, and then Shane came in.”
“Your brother came into your room through the window? Why? Had he lost his key to the front door?”
“Objection.” Gonzales rolls his eyes. “Speculation.”
“Sustained. Please rephrase,” the judge says.
“Is it normal behavior for your brother to enter the house through your window?” Floyd asks.
I rub my fingers over my mouth. “No, but he’s been doing that for over two years now, for…obvious reasons.”
“What reasons, Reagan?”
I tell them everything from the day I got my period to the night of March 15th. I tell them how I trusted him. How I loved those visits at first. How I waited for them. And I tell them how much I dreaded them later, the vile things he threatened if I ever closed that window to stop him from coming in.
The jury shifts uncomfortably. One woman’s hand flies to her mouth.
Then I tell them in great detail about the night Shane forced himself on me and killed our mother to silence her after she found out. The same story Mason told. The story backed with irrefutable evidence.
Gonzales tries his magic on my person and testimony, too. He questions my sanity because of my suicide attempt. He questions my credibility, referencing the time Shane lied about Mason as if the lie was my own. He questions my silence for the past two years and, finally, the motive behind mybravetestimony.
I don’t take any of it personally. He’s doing his job. I’ve been dragged through the mud for way less. I just answer the questions. I even let myself cry at the end. This isn’t a cross-examination. It’s a simple interview about my greatest work yet.
The closing arguments come the next day.
Floyd stands before the jury with confidence. “Members of the jury, you’ve heard testimony about years and years of physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse. About a fourteen-year-old girl trapped in fear, in an endless nightmare created by the very people who should have protected her.
“The defense will try to tell you that Reagan Fletcher is unreliable. That her mental health issues make her testimony suspect. But I ask you to consider this: what would your mental health be like if you lived through what she has? If you were violated repeatedly by someone you trusted? If you had watched your mother die trying to protect you?
