The Whole City Is Putting Her on Trial

Karen's POV

When I got home, two news vans were already parked outside. The second the front-yard lights came on, the flashes hit—like they'd been waiting for me to walk into frame.

"Karen—have the police named you a suspect?"

"Do you admit you threatened Iris Cole multiple times?"

"As a frontrunner for District Attorney, will you drop out?"

I didn't answer. I drove into the garage and went in through the inside door. Victor was in the kitchen, still in his suit jacket, like he'd rushed back from the hospital. He turned the TV down and pulled me into a hug. Disinfectant and cold air.

"Don't look out there," he said. "I'll handle the media."

I looked past him. Nadia was asleep on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. Martha sat beside her, wearing the look people get when they want to comfort you but are terrified of saying the wrong thing.

"She didn't say anything else?" I asked.

"No." Martha lowered her voice. "She just kept asking if they were going to take you away."

My chest tightened. Before I could speak, a familiar voice cut through the TV.

Ellen Price sat in the studio, one of my old campaign photos running beneath her.

"The public has a right to question this. Karen Hale has always made 'mother' part of her political brand. Now a child she's had long-standing conflict with is dead. Of course the community is going to connect those dots."

The feed switched to Patrice—sitting beside an ambulance, blanket over her shoulders, eyes so swollen she looked like she might pass out.

"I don't want to accuse anyone." She sobbed. "I just know… there are people who've always treated Iris like a problem. She was just a kid."

She didn't say my name. It was worse than saying it.

Victor shut the TV off. "Don't watch."

"The whole county is watching." I tossed my bag onto the table and unlocked my phone. The parents' group chat had exploded—hundreds of unread messages, my name every other line. Someone had dug up a fundraiser speech and twisted it into proof I "only care about well-behaved kids like Nadia." Someone posted a screenshot of me arguing with Patrice by the swings. Someone else pulled up an HOA email where I'd asked for more patrols and limits on unsupervised kids, cropped down to two lines:

"If you don't deal with this, it's only a matter of time before something happens."

Now it read like a curse.

Luis called right then.

"I just got out of initial questioning," he said. "Karen, I need to tell you upfront—it's not looking good."

"How many?"

"Six parents back up that you and Patrice have bad blood. Three heard you say in public you didn't want to see Iris again. And someone says when you got to the scene, your first reaction wasn't to ask how the kid was—it was to look around."

"Because the scene didn't look like a fall."

Two seconds of silence. "You shouldn't be making conclusions on the phone."

"Then why are you calling? To warn me the whole community wants me nailed to a cross?"

"I'm warning you not to turn yourself into one." His voice dropped. "And don't delete anything. Group chats, emails, old videos—keep all of it."

I stared at the chat and froze. The screenshots were too clean. This wasn't parents scrambling to post whatever they found. Someone had already sorted every usable clip that pointed at me—filed it, ready to drop in order the second something happened.

I clicked on the account behind the viral video. Brand-new profile. Local number. First post three hours ago. Another used a photo from last year's campaign—me bringing Nadia to the community clean-up—with the caption: She can use her kid as a prop, so of course she can play innocent now.

I saved the links, screenshotted the timestamps, wrote down the names of the first people to pile on. Victor stood across the table, his tone so gentle it sounded practiced.

"What you need right now is rest. Not a war with the internet."

"It's not the internet," I said. "Someone's feeding it."

He reached for my phone. I didn't hand it over.

The doorbell rang—sharp, insistent—and the shouting outside surged. Martha lifted Nadia, startled awake, and carried her upstairs. Nadia looked back at me.

"Mom… why is everyone saying those things about you?"

I didn't have an answer. On the line, Luis sounded like someone had come close. He dropped his voice and hurried out one more thing.

"There's something else. Dr. Reeves took a look at the scene. Off the record—"

A door opened and closed in the background.

"He said the way Iris died doesn't look like a normal fall."