NINE

“Did you want the milk?” Nathaniel’s mother asks.

“I already had a bowl of cereal,” his father replies.

“Oh.” She starts to put it back in the refrigerator, but his father takes it out of her hand. “Maybe I’ll have a little more.”

They look at each other, and then his mother steps back with a funny too-tight smile. “All right,” she says.

Nathaniel watches this the way he would watch a cartoon—knowing in the back of his head that something is not quite real or right, but attracted to the show all the same.

Last summer when he was outside with his father he’d chased an electric green dragonfly all the way across the garden and the pumpkin patch and into the birdbath. There it found a bright blue dragonfly, and for a while they’d watched the two of them nip and thrust at each other, their bodies swords. “Are they fighting?” Nathaniel had asked.

“No, they’re mating.” Before Nathaniel could even ask, his father explained: It was the way animals and bugs and things made babies.

“But it looks like they’re trying to kill each other,” Nathaniel pointed out.

Almost as soon as he said it, the two dragonflies hitched together like a shimmering space station, their wings beating like a quartet of hearts and their long tails quivering.

“Sometimes it’s like that,” his father had answered.

· · ·

Quentin had spent the night tossing on that godawful mattress, wondering what the hell was keeping the jury. No case was a sure thing, but for God’s sake, they had this murder on tape. It should have been pretty simple. Yet the jury had been deliberating since yesterday afternoon; and here it was nearly twenty-four hours later with no verdict.

He has walked past the jury room at least twenty times, trying ESP to will them toward a conviction. The bailiff posted outside the door is an older man with the ability to sleep on his feet. He snorts his way back to a deadpan position of authority as the prosecutor passes. “Anything?” Quentin asks.

“Lot of yelling. They just ordered lunch. Eleven turkey sandwiches and one roast beef.”

Frustrated, Quentin turns on his heel and heads down the hall again, only to crash into his son coming around the corner. “Gideon?”

“What’s up.”

Gideon, in court. For a moment Quentin’s heart stops, like it did a year ago. “What are you doing here?”

The boy shrugs, as if he can’t figure it out himself. “I didn’t have basketball practice today, and I figured I’d just come over and chill out.” He drags his sneaker on the floor to make it squeak. “See what it looks like from the other side, and all.”

A slow smile itches its way across Quentin’s face as he claps his son on the shoulder. And for the first time in the ten years that Quentin Brown has been in a courthouse, he is rendered speechless.

Twenty-six hours; 1,560 minutes; 93,600 seconds. Call it what you like; waiting in any denomination takes a lifetime. I have memorized every inch of this conference room. I have counted the linoleum tiles on the floor, marked the scars on the ceiling, measured off the width of the windows. What are they doing in there?

When the door opens, I realize that the only thing worse than waiting is the moment that you realize a decision has been made.

A white handkerchief appears in the doorway, followed by Fisher.

“The verdict.” The words cut up my tongue. “It’s in?”

“Not yet.”

Boneless, I sink back in the chair as Fisher tosses the handkerchief at me. “Is this in preparation for their finding?”

“No, it’s me, surrendering. I’m sorry about yesterday.” He glances at me. “Although a little advance notice that you wanted to do the closing would have been nice.”

“I know.” I look up at him. “Do you think that’s why the jury didn’t come back fast with an acquittal?”

Fisher shrugs. “Maybe it’s why they didn’t come back fast with a conviction.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve always been best at closings.”

He smiles at me. “I’m a cross-examination man, myself.”

We look at each other for a moment, in complete accord. “What’s the part you hate most about a trial?”

“Now. Waiting for the jury to come back.” Fisher exhales deeply. “I always have to calm down the client, who only wants a prediction about the outcome, and no one can predict that. You prosecutors are lucky; you just win or lose, and you don’t have to reassure someone that he’s not going to go to prison for the rest of his life when you know perfectly well that he …” He breaks off, because all the color has drained from my face. “Well. Anyway. You know that no one can guess a jury’s outcome.”

When I don’t look particularly encouraged, he asks, “What’s the hardest part for you?”

“Right before the state rests, because that’s the last chance I have to make sure I got all the evidence in and that I did it right. Once I say those three words … I know I’m going to find out whether or not I screwed up.”

Fisher meets my eye. “Nina,” he says gently, “the state rests.”

I lay on my side on an alphabet rug on the playroom floor, jamming the foot of a penguin into its wooden slot. “If I do this penguin puzzle one more time,” I say, “I will save the jury some trouble and hang myself.”

Caleb looks up from where he is sitting with Nathaniel, sorting multicolored plastic teddy bears. “I want to go outside,” Nathaniel whines.

“We can’t, buddy. We’re waiting for some important news for Mommy.”

“But I want to!” Nathaniel kicks the table, hard.

“Maybe in a little while.” Caleb hands him a batch of bears. “Here, take some more.”

“No!” With one arm, Nathaniel swipes the entire tray off the table. The sorting containers bounce and roll into the block area; the plastic bears scatter to all four corners of the room. The resulting clatter rings inside my head, in the empty spot where I am trying so hard to think of absolutely nothing.

I get to my feet, grab my son by the shoulders, and shake him. “You do not throw toys! You will pick up every last one of these, Nathaniel, and I mean it!”

Nathaniel, now, is sobbing at the top of his lungs. Caleb, tight-faced, turns on me too. “Just because you’re at the end of your rope, Nina, doesn’t mean that you—”

“’Scuse me.”

The voice at the door makes all three of us turn. A bailiff leans in, nods at us. “The jury’s coming in,” he says.

“It’s not a verdict,” Fisher whispers to me minutes later.

“How do you know?”

“Because the bailiff would have said so … not just that the jury was back.”

I draw back, dubious. “Bailiffs never tell me anything.”

“Trust me.”

I wet my lips. “Then why are we here?”

“I don’t know,” Fisher admits, and we both turn our attention to the judge.

He sits at the bench, looking overjoyed to have finally reached the end of this debacle. “Mr. Foreperson,” Judge Neal asks, “has the jury reached a verdict?”

A man in the front row of the jury box stands up. He takes off his baseball cap and tucks it under his arm, then clears his throat. “Your Honor, we’ve been trying, but we can’t seem to get together on this. There’s some of us that—”

“Hold on, Mr. Foreperson, don’t say any more. Have you deliberated about this case and have you taken a vote to see what every juror’s position is on the issue of guilt or innocence?”

“We’ve done it a bunch of times, but it keeps coming back to a few that won’t change their minds.”

The judge looks at Fisher, and then at Quentin. “Counsel, approach.”

I stand up, too, and the judge sighs. “All right, Mrs. Frost, you too.” At the bench, he murmurs, “I’m going to give them an Allen charge. Any objections?”

“No objection,” Quentin says, and Fisher agrees. As we walk back to the defense table, I meet Caleb’s eye, and silently mouth, “They’re hung.”

The judge begins to speak. “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve heard all the facts, and you’ve heard all the evidence. I am aware it’s been a long haul, and that you have a difficult decision to make. But I also know that you can reach closure … and that you’re the best jury to do it. If the case has to be tried again, another group of jurors will not necessarily do a better job than you are doing.” He glances soberly at the group. “I urge you to go back to the jury room, to respectfully consider each other’s opinions, and to see if some progress can’t be made. At the end of the afternoon, I’m going to ask you to come back and let me know how you’re doing.”

“Now what?” Caleb whispers, from behind me.

I watch the newly energized jury file out again. Now we wait.

Watching someone tie themselves in a knot makes you squirm in your own seat, or so Caleb discovers after spending two and a half more hours with Nina while the jury is deliberating. She sits hunched forward on a tiny chair in the playroom, completely ignorant of Nathaniel making airplane sounds as he zooms around with his arms extended. Her eyes stare intensely at absolutely nothing; her chin rests on her fist.

“Hey,” Caleb says softly.

She blinks, comes back to him. “Oh … hey.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.” A smile stretches her lips thin. “Yes!” she repeats.

It reminds Caleb of the time years ago that he attempted to teach her to water-ski: She is trying too hard, instead of just letting it happen. “Why don’t we all go down to the vending machines?” he suggests. “Nathaniel can get some hot chocolate, and I’ll treat you to the dishwater that passes for soup.”

“Sounds great.”

Caleb turns to Nathaniel and tells him they are going to get a snack. He runs to the door, and Caleb walks up behind him. “Come on,” he says to Nina. “We’re ready.”

She stares at him as if they have never had a conversation, much less one thirty seconds ago. “To do what?” she asks.

Patrick sits on a bench behind the courthouse, freezing his ass off, and watching Nathaniel whoop his way across a field. Why this child has so much energy at four-thirty in the afternoon is beyond him, but then he can remember back to when he and Nina used to spend entire days playing pond hockey without tiring or getting frostbite. Maybe time is only something you notice when you get old and have less of it at your disposal.

The boy collapses beside Patrick, his cheeks a fiery red, his nose running. “Got a tissue, Patrick?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry, Weed. Use your sleeve.”

Nathaniel laughs, and then does just that. He ducks his head beneath Patrick’s arm, and it makes Patrick want to shout. If only Nina could see this, her son seeking out someone’s touch—oh, God, what it would do for her morale right now. He hugs Nathaniel close, drops a kiss on the top of his head.

“I like playing with you,” Nathaniel says.

“Well, I like playing with you too.”

“You don’t yell.”

Patrick glances down at him. “Your mom been doing that?”

Nathaniel shrugs, then nods. “It’s like she got stolen and they left someone mean in her place who looks just like her. Someone who can’t sit still and who doesn’t hear me when I talk and when I do talk it’s always giving her a headache.” He looks into his lap. “I want my old mom back.”

“She wants that too, Weed.” Patrick looks to the west, where the sun has begun to draw blood from the horizon. “Truth is, she’s pretty nervous right now. She isn’t sure what kind of news she’s going to hear.” When Nathaniel shrugs, he adds, “You know she loves you.”

“Well,” the boy says defensively. “I love her too.”

Patrick nods. You’re not the only one, he thinks.

· · ·

“A mistrial?” I say, shaking my head. “No. Fisher, I can’t go through this again. You know trials don’t get any better with age.”

“You’re thinking like a prosecutor,” Fisher admonishes, “except this time, you’re right.” He turns around from the window where he is standing. “I want you to chew on something tonight.”

“What?”

“Waiving the jury. I’ll talk to Quentin in the morning, if you agree, and see if he’s willing to let the judge decide the verdict.”

I stare at him. “You know that we were trying this case on the emotion, not the law. A jury might acquit based on emotion. But a judge is always going to rule based on the law. Are you crazy?”

“No, Nina,” Fisher answers soberly. “But neither were you.”

We lie in bed that night with the weight of a full moon pressing down on us. I have told Caleb about my conversation with Fisher, and now we both stare at the ceiling, as if the answer might appear, skywritten with stars. I want Caleb to take my hand across the great expanse of this bed. I need that, to believe we are not miles apart.

“What do you think?” he asks.

I turn to him. In the moonlight his profile is edged in gold, the color of courage. “I’m not making decisions by myself anymore,” I answer.

He comes up on an elbow, turning to me. “What would happen?”

I swallow, and try to keep my voice from shaking. “Well, a judge is going to convict me, because legally, I committed murder. But the upside is … I probably won’t be sentenced as long as I would have been with a jury verdict.”

Suddenly Caleb’s face looms over mine. “Nina … you can’t go to jail.”

I turn away, so that the tear slips down the side of my face he cannot see. “I knew I was taking this chance when I did it.”

His hands tighten on my shoulders. “You can’t. You just can’t.”

“I’ll be back.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

Caleb buries his face in my neck, drawing in great draughts of air. And then suddenly I am clutching at him, too, as if there cannot be any distance between us today, because tomorrow there will be so much. I feel the rough pads of his hands mark my back; and the heat of his grief is searing. When he comes inside me I dig my nails into his shoulders, trying to leave behind a trace of myself. We make love with near violence, with so much emotion that the atmosphere around us hums. And then, like all things, it is over.

“But I love you,” Caleb says, his voice breaking, because in a perfect world, this should be all the excuse one needs.

That night I dream I am walking into an ocean, the waves soaking the hem of my cotton nightgown. The water is cold, but not nearly as cold as it usually is in Maine, and the beach beneath is a smooth lip of sand. I keep walking, even when the water reaches my knees, even when it brushes my hips and my nightgown sticks to my body like a second skin. I keep walking, and the water comes up to my neck, my chin. By the time I go under I realize I am going to drown.

At first I fight, trying to ration the air I have in my lungs. Then they start to burn, a circle of fire beneath my ribs. My wide eyes burst black, and my feet start to thrash, but I am getting nowhere. This is it, I think. Finally.

With that realization I let my arms go still, and my legs go limp. I feel my body sinking and the water filling me, until I am curled on the sand at the base of the sea.

The sun is a quivering yellow eye. I get to my feet, and to my great surprise, begin to walk with ease on the bottom of the ocean floor.

Nathaniel doesn’t move the hour I sit on his bed, watching him sleep. But when I touch his hair, unable to hold back any longer, he rolls over and blinks at me. “It’s still dark,” he whispers.

“I know. It’s not morning.”

I watch him trying to puzzle this out: What could have brought me, then, to wake him in the middle of the night? How am I supposed to explain to him that the next time I have the opportunity to do this, his body might reach the whole length of the bed? That by the time I come back, the boy I left behind will no longer exist?

“Nathaniel,” I say, with a shuddering breath, “I might be going away.”

He sits up. “You can’t, Mommy.” Smiling, he even finds a reason. “We just got back.”

“I know … but this isn’t my choice.”

Nathaniel pulls the covers up to his chest, suddenly looking very small. “What did I do this time?”

With a sob I pull him onto my lap and bury my face against his hair. He rubs his nose against my neck, and it reminds me so much of him as an infant that I cannot breathe. I would trade everything, now, to have those minutes back, tucked into a miser’s lockbox. Even the ordinary moments—driving in the car, cleaning up the playroom, cooking dinner with Nathaniel. They are no less miraculous simply because they are something we did as a matter of routine. It is not what you do with a child that brings you together … it is the fact that you are lucky enough to do it at all.

I draw away to look at his face. That bow of a mouth, the slope of his nose. His eyes, preserving memories like the amber they resemble. Keep them, I think. Watch over them for me.

By now, I am crying hard. “I promise, it won’t be forever. I promise that you can come see me. And I want you to know every minute of every day that I’m away from you … I’m thinking of how long it’ll be before I come back.”

Nathaniel wraps his arms around my neck and holds on for dear life. “I don’t want you to go.”