Chapter 22: Eight Years, Again

It was the same courtroom.

The same oak rail, the same flag in the corner.

The same clock above the door ran two minutes slow.

I sat in the second row on the aisle.

It was the first time I had ever sat on this side of the rail.

Jerome sat beside me in a dark suit, with his hand over mine on the bench.

He was not in the back row this time.

"Are you all right?" he said, very low.

"I will be. Ask me in an hour."

The jury filed in at ten past two.

There were twelve of them, and none looked at the defendant.

I watched their faces anyway.

In my last life I had watched them too, and I had known by the way they sat that it was over.

Sabrina sat at the defense table in a gray suit, with her hair pulled back and her wrists folded.

She looked as small as she ever had.

For three days the prosecutor had played the four angles on a screen.

Dirk had sat in the witness chair and told the same true things he had told the ballroom.

He had looked at no one while he said them.

On the second day Sabrina had taken the stand herself.

She had cried.

It was the best crying I had ever seen.

The tears ran without a sound, and her voice broke at exactly the right places.

She said she had been frightened and confused, and that Margaret Lang had made her do it.

The jury had watched her the whole time with their hands in their laps.

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