Chapter 24 - TESSA TESTIFIES ABOUT BEING CALLED UNSTABLE
Tessa testified for most of one day.
She described postpartum life.
The jury heard details people usually hide behind:
“new mother.”
Bleeding.
Breast pain.
Sleep deprivation.
Crying in the shower.
Forgetting whether she had eaten.
Loving June so intensely that sometimes the love itself felt frightening.
Then the logs.
“Were the entries false?”
“Some were accurate.”
Important.
“Did you cry?”
“Yes.”
“Say you couldn’t do it?”
“At three in the morning while June had been crying forty minutes, yes.”
“Did you sleep while Daniel cared for the baby?”
“I hope so.”
A juror smiled.
Then:
“Were you unable to safely parent?”
“No.”
“Did any doctor say you were?”
“No.”
“Therapist?”
“No.”
“Social worker?”
“No.”
Then defense.
“Did you ever ask Brielle for help?”
“Yes.”
“Allow her to feed June?”
“Yes.”
“Let June nap at the Marlow estate?”
Once.
“Did you tell Eudora you were exhausted?”
“Yes.”
“So their concern was not invented.”
“No. The conclusion was.”
Good.
Then her cloud-file mistake.
She admitted restoring files.
No hiding.
Then the shower.
“Did Brielle touch you?”
“She blocked my path.”
“Push you?”
“No.”
“Strike you?”
“No.”
“Did she know Eudora would release June?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer mattered.
Tessa did not make the case bigger for Brielle than she could support.
Then Eudora.
“Why do you believe she was trying to steal June?”
The defense objected to legal conclusion.
Sustained.
Question rephrased.
“What conduct made you use the words ‘tried to steal my baby’?”
Tessa answered:
“The packed bag. The copied documents. The nursery. The kinship form. The messages telling me June would sleep there after I said no. Then Eudora physically took her from the bassinet while I was trying to leave.”
May you like
No statute needed.
The facts explained the sentence.
