He reached for her briefcase without asking, setting it beside her desk the way he always did.
“Nell,” he said gently—not a warning. A check-in.
For a second—just one—Charleston flashed behind her eyes.
The courthouse steps. The crowd pressing close. The mother’s face. The headlines.
She didn’t let it linger.
“That case was clean,” Eleanor said. “The verdict was right.”
Deck’s voice dropped.
“Clean doesn’t mean it didn’t cost you.”
He’d stood behind her every day of that trial. Arms crossed. Watching the husband instead of the jury. Watching the fallout before it ever started.
Before she could answer, the glass door burst open again.
“Have y’all seen this?” Lucy called.
Lucy Patel—junior at Jackson Valley University, social media fluent, and entirely too plugged in—hurried inside with her phone already raised.
“They’re everywhere,” she said. “TikTok, YouTube, Insta. Fifty-two thousand live views and climbing.”
Frannie closed her eyes briefly. “Lord help us.”
Lucy spun the phone around.
Clip one:
Reid questioning the witness.
Caption:
THE GOLDEN PROSECUTOR OF SYLVA
Deck made a low noise somewhere between a grunt and a growl.
Lucy swiped.
Clip two:
Eleanor looking straight into the camera.
Caption:
ICE DEFENSE ATTORNEY SAYS ‘YES.’
“That’s not what I meant,” Eleanor said.
Eleanor stared at the word Ice. In Charleston, they’d called her The Snow Queen. Different city, same temperature. Theynever called the men ice for being composed; they called them tenacious.
“Doesn’t matter,” Lucy replied. “It plays.”
She swiped again.
Photos of Main Street.
