Despite the façade that she showed to the world, Kennedy Abrams' life had been anything but easy since she could remember. Or, really, since her parents' divorce had finalized and she realized how big of a moron her father was.

Kennedy felt like Rebecca saw her through the lens that Kennedy portrayed to the world. She felt like Rebecca was doing everything that she was doing because she thought she was hurting a girl who had everything, when, in actuality, she was hurting a girl who had absolutely nothing left. Which also meant she had nothing to lose.

Kennedy had been to two places in the past few days since the story broke that her trial would actually be taking place, and the state was repealing its plea offer: the Hotchky & Fitch offices, and her apartment. She hadn't gone to the grocery store, to the gym, to a friend's apartment. She had stayed put, only going between two places, trying not to get in trouble for anything else in her life.

At present, she sat in her living room, a bowl of low-cal popcorn on her lap and her electrolyte-infused water on the coffee table that her feet rested on. She could smell something burning in the kitchen while Lyla failed at rapping along to Megan Thee Stallion, and Rian could be heard singing her heart out to her 'i hate men' playlist in her bedroom.

It was almost the picture-perfect setting for the text message that lit up Kennedy's phone a few minutes into her rerun of Schitt's Creek.

Sometimes Kennedy was convinced that Brianne could not actually be thirty-seven years old, because her texting sounded like Kennedy's eighty-four-year-old grandmother.

Brianne: It's been moved. Oconee County Courthouse.

"Guys!" Kennedy shrieked, almost throwing her phone across the room. "We did it!"

"If you're talking about the courthouse switch, it's already on the news, and technically your lawyer did it," Lyla waltzed into the kitchen, two ruthlessly burnt protein waffles on the plate in her hand, "But congrats."

"You're not sufficiently excited about this," Kennedy rolled her eyes as Rian's playlist paused and the third roommate came sprinting into the living room, "Rian, they got the trial moved to Oconee County!"

"Yay!" Rian cheered, pumping her right fist in the air as if she had just finished a marathon. "This is so exciting, Ken! You're gonna totally be found not guilty, just wait."

"She did it, Ri." Lyla raised her eyebrows, "I don't know if we want her to be found not guilty."

Kennedy glared at Lyla, her heart sinking a bit. She wished that everyone around her would understand the gravity of the situation she had found herself in those few months back, and that she could simply show everyone else the person Hank had been.

She remembered the night he had come to her door, banging on it, demanding that she let him in. She remembered him cursing and yelling until her neighbors came out to see if she was alright. She remembered how Hank hadn't left until her neighbors had threatened to call the cops. He couldn't have an arrest on his sparkling clean record.

Kennedy wished everyone saw that side of what she had done. The side that showed a little bit of why she would have done it.

Rebecca Eaves, despite the fact that Kennedy had started colloquially referring to her as 'That Bitch,' was the only person with a right to be angry at Kennedy's decision-making. She had sort of tried to get her thrown in jail.

That had certainly backfired, though.

Lyla and Rian eventually wandered off to their respective jobs, while Kennedy stayed back and kept the TV going in the background of her thoughts.

She remembered Brianne talking to her about the different ways she could get the case's jurisdiction moved. The one that she had decided to go with was that the jury in Tampa wouldn't be able to be impartial towards Kennedy, since Wilcox had been such a famous staple of their community. He was still known around Clemson, but there were far less people likely to be grabbing their torches over his death in the state further north.

Whatever the reasoning behind it, Brianne's argument must have worked. Kennedy wondered if anyone had been vehemently against moving the trial—probably friends of Hank's who wanted to see his killer brought to the most severe justice possible.

Despite the fact that it had been months, Kennedy never got used to the idea that she had killed someone. Sometimes she felt emotionless about it, and sometimes she felt bad about feeling emotionless about it—but not often. More often than not, Kennedy Abrams felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of her shoulders with the death of Hank Wilcox, and she wasn't going to apologize for it. She just needed to be able to think clearly and prepare for the fact that she was going to be on trial for murder, and soon.

Kennedy remembered her first few weeks of being friends with Rebecca—before everything had gone so terribly downhill. Or, she supposed 'friends' was a bit of a stretch—could you really be friends with someone who you had decided to pin a crime against? On the off chance that a crime happened?

And then the crime did happen?

She remembered the conversation with Rebecca that had led to everything going up in flames. The graffitied warehouse in Henderson, in a random room where she had done a photoshoot with her stepmother and done the best lying of her lifetime in convincing her that she wasn't Kennedy Abrams, but Drew Parley.

It helped that Lydia Farrow Abrams had never wanted much to do with Kennedy or her siblings in the first place.

She remembered Rebecca showing up and knocking on the door, and Kennedy running over to grab it before anyone else could.

"You're fired. So you can go home now."

"I'm fired? You can't fire me from this photoshoot. I set the whole thing up—"

"You're fired from the account. You're done with Drew Parley and you're done with the Instagram account. I can take it from here."

"How in the hell do you justify firing me from the account? All of the funds go to me, I sign all the papers—"

"I already transferred the payments to me. And I'm more than capable of signing papers, Rebecca."

"I don't unders...why? Why are you doing this?"

"The fame is getting to your head. I'm doing this to protect you from yourself, Rebecca. I can't be friends with someone so power-hungry, and if we're not friends, then you can't be on this account. I am the face of it, after all. You booking this photoshoot without asking me first just shows that you value the fame and money from this account more than you value our friendship. Which is really sad, because I considered you one of my closest—"

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"Bullshit, Kennedy. You're not doing this for me. You're doing this because you want to keep the money for yourself and you're sick of having to include me in everything you do. I was never a friend to you, I was just some sort of minion who set up this entire account for you so that you could be rich and famous."

"You're welcome to believe whatever you want, Rebecca. Just know that you're done with the account, and now you can go home."

"Drew!" A voice called from the other side of the door, "We're waiting!"

"Coming, Lydia!" Kennedy called back before turning to Rebecca. "You're lucky I'm such a good liar, by the way. This whole thing could have come crashing down when she recognized me. But I got us out of it."

"What if this whole thing does come crashing down? What if everything is revealed?"

"I just told you, everything is fine. Don't get me started on how terrible you are at listening to anything..."

"What if I reveal everything? You've pushed me out and put everything in your name. What if I reveal everything that happened and you're no longer Drew Parley?"

"What if I give the police the pieces of your broken windshield with Hank Wilcox's blood on them?"

"I'm sorry, you kept those? You fixed my car and kept the windshield pieces? Did you know you were going to blackmail me—"

"I like to be careful. So just keep that in mind when you think about revealing my secrets. I have plenty of yours to use."

Rebecca stood still, her mouth open slightly as she stared at Kennedy.

"Close your mouth, sweetie. Jealousy is an ugly color on you."

Kennedy didn't feel great about that conversation, but if she had to do it all again, she was pretty sure she wouldn't have changed anything about it. Did that make her a bad person? Perhaps. Did killing Hank Wilcox, specifically, make her a bad person? That one was up for debate.

><><><

Rebecca tried to keep her mouth shut and not think about the fact that she was sitting in front of the father of her nemesis. She had often been told that people don't have nemeses in real life, but she thought that was stupid. People definitely had nemeses in real life.

"And I'm Lydia Farrow Abrams," the woman nodded in Rebecca's direction when the latter didn't offer an introduction to herself, "I'm Kennedy's stepmother. But I think you knew that already."

Rebecca knew the woman had looked familiar, and that was why—renowned model Lydia Farrow-turned-Abrams was the person, or the person whose photoshoot, had resulted in Kennedy kicking Rebecca off of Drew Parley's Instagram, Rebecca driving home and talking to Leo, and everything that ensued.

There she was, sitting with her ankles crossed, a sugary sweet smile on her face that hardly reached her high cheekbones, let alone her eyes.

"I did, yes." Rebecca nodded, finally speaking. "I'm just confused as to why you're coming to talk to me instead of your daughter."

"Step-daughter." Lydia corrected with deft swiftness.

"Well, she's my daughter," Kristopher said quietly, leaning forward in his seat so that his eyes were level with Rebecca's, "We're here to talk to you, instead of Kennedy, because we want her to go down for this."

Don't look shocked, don't look shocked, Rebecca repeated in her head, trying and failing at the thing she was attempting. Don't look shocked, she repeated again as her eyes widened and her mouth opened just enough for Kristopher to chuckle.

"I know, it sounds ludicrous and cruel. Who would want their own daughter put away?" He shook his head as Lydia's face remained stoic, "But, Miss Eaves, you do not understand the absolute tragedy that Kennedy has put this family through with her actions."

Rebecca raised one eyebrow, and only one. She tried to think about how a normal parent would react to their daughter being on trial for murder; they would most likely be all over their kid, trying to help her get out of the mess she was in. They probably wouldn't be meeting with the person who turned their kid in, claiming that their daughter's predicament had brought 'tragedy' to their family.

But then again, with the way Kennedy was, Rebecca supposed she shouldn't have been surprised that her parents were just as out of touch as she was.

"Go on," Rebecca said, leaning back in her chair and immediately regretting it. She felt like the antagonist in a movie who was listening to their henchmen's evil plan.

Alright, the guilt is manifesting itself today.

"Hank Wilcox is—was—one of my oldest business partners and friend. He contributed a great deal to my practice—"

"What do you do again?" Rebecca interrupted. She figured the guy was rich, but she wasn't sure exactly how.

"I'm a plastic surgeon right outside of Washington, D.C." Kristopher replied evenly.

"Do a lot of people in D.C. get plastic surgery?"

"I believe that's beside the point here." Kennedy's father said firmly, his eyes staring straight into Rebecca's marred soul. "Hank Wilcox contributed greatly to my practice. He contributed greatly to all of my children's education funds, including Kennedy's. He was a good man, and I am absolutely appalled at the thought of my daughter doing something this heinous."

"Your daughter was stalked by this guy," Rebecca replied slowly, unsure of why she was defending Kennedy, but feeling some feministic duty to do so, "I mean, he wasn't innocent."

"She claims she was stalked by him," Kristopher replied, "If she were really being stalked, don't you think she would have said something to the police? Kennedy's not an idiot."

"It's pretty rare for women to be taken seriously when they come forward against their abusers, especially against rich, powerful men." Rebecca replied, raising her left eyebrow, "While I want Kennedy to go down for what she did, because it was wrong, I'm not going to be in the business of slut shaming or victim blaming her."

Kristopher was silent and leaned back, his shoulders level with his wife's.

"You're different than I expected, Miss Eaves." Lydia spoke instead of Kristopher, "I thought after everything my stepdaughter did to you, you'd be ready to burn her at the stake."

Rebecca sighed, a long, drawn-out sigh that made her entire body shift.

"I want Kennedy to be brought to justice, like I said before. I believe that's a goal that we share."

"I agree." Kristopher cocked his head to the side and cracked his knuckles loudly, "So, I was thinking that you could help us out."

Rebecca took a deep breath and tried not to think too much about the next thing that came out of her mouth, because she knew she would live to regret it.

"And what can I do for you?"