Page 18 of Jury Woman, Part 4 of 6

When I opened my eyes, Josh had his thumb in his mouth, gnawing at the raw skin around his cuticle.

"Honey. How are you doing?"

He shrugged, his gaze sliding off to the side. "Things suck."

"Which things?"

"All of it." He pulled his thumb away and started ticking off fingers. "School sucks. Soccer sucks. Heidi sucks. Dad sucks." He stopped on the fifth finger. "And you—"

He broke off. His hand dropped into his lap.

He didn't need to finish. The unspoken word hung there between us.

I made myself breathe before I answered. The worst thing I could do right now was cry at a fourteen-year-old boy who was already carrying too much.

"I know everything's upside down right now," I said. "And I'm so sorry about that. I'm sorry I'm not there. But I need to ask you for something. Lily's hurting really badly, and she might not let anybody else in, but she might let you. Could you try to make her feel better? Even a little?"

He picked at a thread on his hoodie. "Like how?"

"Knock on her door. Bring her some cereal. Tell her Scott's a jerk. Sit with her and watch one of her awful reality shows without making fun of it." I managed a smile. "Well. Without making too much fun of it."

The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close enough to one that I held on to it. "I'll try."

"That's all I'm asking."

"I gotta go." Somewhere offscreen, Tucker whined at his door.

"Okay. Josh, tell Lily I love her. And I love you, too. So much."

"Yeah." His eyes didn't quite reach the camera. "I know."

His hand came toward the screen, then it went blank.

Deputy Wells fell in beside me as I left the conference room. The corridor seemed longer than usual, the carpet pattern swimming a little whenever I looked down at it. We passed the ice machine, the stairwell door, the framed print of magnolias I'd walked by a hundred times.

Near the elevator, I heard myself ask, "Do you think I'm a bad mother?"

"You asked me that before."

"I know, but somehow things seem… worse."

He didn't answer right away. He pressed the call button, and we both watched the numbers above the doors tick downward.

"It doesn't matter what I think," he said.

The elevator chimed. The doors slid open. He held one of them back with his hand and waited for me to step inside.

Then, as I passed him, he said quietly, "But hell no."

October 19, Monday

SPECIAL AGENT Reyes was back on the stand, and this time she'd brought a timeline.

It stretched across three easels set side by side in front of the jury box, a white strip nearly twelve feet long, studded with colored flags. Blue for meetings. Green for money. Yellow for phone calls. Red for acts of violence. When the courtroom deputy finished positioning the last easel, I counted eleven red flags before I made myself stop.

Lily's gloves were finished, and I hadn't started anything new, so my hands had nothing to do but grip my pen. I'd filled most of a second notebook since August. This morning the pages stayed blank for a long time, because I couldn't take my eyes off the wall of color.

"Agent Reyes," McDavid said, "let's start at the beginning."