Malice by Danielle Steel

ever had, and she had slowly come not only to trust them, but to love them.
    The judge had instructed the jury that they had four choices for their verdict. Murder, with premeditated intent to kill, which could call for the death penalty, if they believed that she had plotted in advance to kill her father, and knew that her acts would result in his death. Voluntary manslaughter, if she had indeed wanted to kill him, but not planned it, but believed falsely that she was justified in killing him, because she felt he was harming her at the time. Voluntary manslaughter would require a sentence of up to twenty years. Involuntary manslaughter if he had been harming her, and she had intended to hurt or resist him or cause him great bodily harm, but not kill him, but her “reckless” behavior had caused his death. Involuntary manslaughter would put her in prison for anywhere from one to ten years. And justifiable force if they believed her story that he had raped her that night and over the previous four years, and she was defending herself against his potentially life-threatening attack on her person. David had addressed them powerfully, and demanded justice in the form of a verdict of “defense with the use of justifiable force” for this innocent young girl who had suffered so much and lived a life of torture at the hands of her parents. He had made her tell all of it to the jury. That was her only hope now.
    It was a late September afternoon when the jury finally came in, and Grace almost fainted when she heard the verdict.
    The foreman rose solemnly, and announced that they had reached a verdict. She had been found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. They believed that John Adams had done something to her, though they were not quite sure what, and they did not believe that he had raped her, then or ever. But he had hurt her possibly, and two of the women on the jury had been insistent that even good men sometimes had dark secrets. There had been enough doubt in their minds for them to shy away from murder one and the death penalty. But the next step down from there was voluntary manslaughter, and that was how they had charged her. They believed, as the judge had explained in his instructions to them, that Grace had believed falsely , and therein lay the key, that she was justified in killing her father. Because of his glowing reputation in the community, they had been unable to accept that her father had been truly harming her, but they did believe that Grace had believed that, though incorrectly. Voluntary manslaughter carried a sentence of up to twenty years, at the judge's discretion.
    And in the end, because of her extreme youth, and the fact that Grace herself had believed it to be both a crime of passion and of justifiable defense, the judge gave her two years in prison, and two years probation. Considering the possibilities, it was something of a gift, but it sounded like a lifetime to Grace as she listened to the words, and tried to force herself to understand it. In some ways, she thought death might have been easier. The judge had agreed to seal her records too, because of her age, and in the hope of not damaging her life any further when she got out of prison.
    But Grace couldn't help wondering what would happen to her now. What would they do to her in prison? In jail, she had had the occasional scare, of other women threatening her, or taking her magazines or her toothpaste. Molly had been bringing things like that to her, and Frank Wills had reluctantly agreed to give her a few hundred dollars of her father's money, when David asked him.
    But in jail, the women came and went in a few days, and she never felt truly in danger. She was there the longest by far, and on the worst charges. But prison would be filled with women who really had committed murder. She looked up at the judge with dry eyes and a look of sorrow. She was a person whose life had long since been lost, and she knew it. She had never had a chance