"And I don't want you to spend ten years wishing you had lived your own life," she answered. He looked at the table, suddenly unable to see it clearly. Sarah reached across the plates and took his hand. "Whatever happens, you are not responsible for what other people chose to do. I need you to know that."
He nodded because speaking would have broken him. Later, after she went to bed, he stayed awake listening to the pipes rattle in the walls and reading the case file by the light of the kitchen range. He thought about the pear tree outside and about his father tightening bolts on the porch after midnight, refusing to leave a job half finished. He did not know how to save the house or the woman sleeping upstairs, but he knew how to keep asking questions.
On the first morning of trial, a courthouse security officer checked Elijah's identification twice. He had dressed in a dark suit Bennett found at a secondhand shop, with sleeves that reached too far down his hands and a narrow blue tie Sarah had ironed the previous night. The judge had approved an unusual but carefully limited arrangement: Elijah could sit beside the defense, organize exhibits, and, with Bennett present and responsible for the representation, ask technical questions when the court specifically allowed it. He was not licensed to practice law, and Bennett made that distinction clear to him more than once.
"If I stop you, you stop," she warned as they entered the courtroom. "If the judge asks a question, answer what was asked. Don't give the speech you wish someone would let you give."
"You make me sound like an idiot," Elijah said.
"I make you sound nineteen," she replied. "That's not an insult. It means nobody expects you to know what I learned by making mistakes for twenty years. Let me handle the law so you can help me understand the numbers."
Judge Arthur Harrison took his seat shortly after nine. He had served on the bench for nearly three decades, and he carried the weariness of a man who had watched generations of attorneys make the same avoidable mistakes in slightly different clothes. He knew Dana Pierce well, admired her preparation, and had more than once warned her that confidence could become impatience. In a case involving a missing community fund and an apparently clear electronic trail, he expected an efficient trial.
The jury consisted of twelve people who had spent two days being asked about their experiences with computers, city agencies, and public money. A transit supervisor sat in the front row, beside a retired office manager, a high-school counselor, and a woman who ran a small accounting business. Elijah had copied their occupations into his notebook because he thought people made sense of complicated evidence through the work they had actually done. Pierce appeared to know it instinctively, speaking to each juror as if the prosecution's charts had been designed with that person's life in mind.