“Eli,” I said. “Put your good shoes out for tomorrow.
We’re going to go get your sister.”
He looked up at me.
And for the first time in two weeks, my little boy smiled.
PART 4
The hearing was at the county courthouse, nine in the morning.
I have never seen a room hold so many people so quietly.
Grant was there with a lawyer, and he had aged ten years in a week.
He’d been served the afternoon before, and arrested, and released on conditions, and he sat at his table not looking at me, because he could not.
Vanessa was there too, in custody, in the dark coat my son had described — because an eight-year-old’s memory, it turns out, is a better witness than any adult in that building expected.
My mother was there.
My brother.
Ruth beside me.
And the couple from the north — the Harmons — sitting in the back row, holding each other, having driven ninety minutes to do the right thing at the cost of their own broken hearts.
