I told her sure, to have fun, hung up, and stood in the hallway considering the wall.
Which is when I noticed the photo.
It had been hanging there for three years without me really seeing it—the four of us at Tybee Island, the summer Lily was thirteen. Warren was tan and laughing at something off-camera. Both kids squinting into the sun. I was in the middle, arm around Lily, looking directly at the lens with an expression that seemed, in retrospect, less like happiness and more like determination. As if I were willing the moment to be as good as it looked.
My hand went up. I nearly took the frame off the wall, then I dropped my hand. The kids didn't need to come home to a pale rectangle on the wallpaper. Their past wasn't mine to dismantle.
I went to the couch, picked up my knitting, and turned on the television.
The news was mid-report on the Blackthorne trial—jury selection expected to conclude soon, preparations underway—and then a photo of the defendant filled the screen. Robert Blackthorne, in a very good suit, with the expression of a man who had never once doubted his own impunity. A jutting chin. A smile that didn't extend past his mouth.
My pulse kicked up a beat.
Right. Not supposed to watch this.
I changed the channel and landed on a true-crime mystery, which felt like a reasonable compromise. The plot caught me immediately—a closed circle of suspects, competing motives, evidence that kept rearranging itself.
By the forty-minute mark I had my conclusion firmly in hand.
"It's that guy," I said to Tucker. "Obviously. Since the second scene."
I was so confident I actually relaxed. I knitted four rows with the comfortable ease of a woman who'd already solved the mystery.
When the final reveal came—a completely different person, a completely different motive, telegraphed by clues I had apparently stared at directly and dismissed as irrelevant—I sat back.
If I could be expertly steered to the wrong conclusion by a television writer, what exactly was I proposing to contribute to a federal organized crime trial?
July 19, Sunday
SUNDAY MORNINGI made the tactical error of introducing the concept of a chore chart while everyone still had food in front of them.
"Here's the thing," I said, sliding the paper across the breakfast bar. "With me at the courthouse all week, some things are falling through the cracks. So I need each of you to take a few things off the list."
Lily scanned the sheet, set it down, and looked at me with genuine bewilderment. "Can't you just tell the court you're needed at home? Like, buh-bye?" She made a little wave.
"It doesn't work that way."
"But why do they even want you?" She said it without cruelty, which almost made it worse. "I mean—no offense—but you're basically a trad wife. Wouldn't they want someone who actually knows things about the law? Or like, the world?"
I absorbed the blow, sat with it for a few seconds.
"A jury isn't supposed to be made up of experts," I said. "It's supposed to reflect actual people. Because crime doesn't only happen to people with law degrees. It happens to everyone—people in corporate offices and people in neighborhoods like this one."
Lily absorbed this in the way teenagers absorb things they partially agree with but will not be seen agreeing with. She handed the chore list to Josh, who passed it back to me without looking at it.
"You're both taking two things," I said. "Non-negotiable. And since we have the afternoon free, what about bowling?"
"Nope."
"Absolutely not."
"Dad's picking us up," Josh said. "His apartment complex has a pool."
"We have a pool. Right up the street."
"It's full of little kids," Lily said. "Dad's pool is for adults."
Two minutes later the doorbell rang.
