No One Knows Us Here(92)

We took our seats, waiting for the courtroom to settle down. I began to make out familiar faces in the crowd. Margorie was there, and Steele. Jamila and Priya.

Hannah. Hannah Westover. I noticed her and her big brown anime eyes before I saw my own sister sitting next to her. When my gaze landed on them, they bounced in their seats and smiled broadly, waving. I was so happy to see her there, my sister. At the very sight of her, all the tension in my shoulders, in my neck, relaxed. My face broke out in a huge grin at the sight of her. My fingers lifted up in a wave.

The crowd was quieting. The deputy had collected the signs. Before I turned back around, I scanned the crowd one last time, hoping to spot Sam. Part of me had hoped he would show up, even to sit in the background and glower at me. He wasn’t there.



“Here are some things you already know about Leo Glass,” the prosecutor began. Her name was Linda Murray. While I tried my hardest to give the appearance of concentration, I was finding it difficult to focus on her words, mostly about what a great guy Leo Glass was, what a loss to the world. He built a company out of nothing in a few short years. Contributed to Portland’s economy. Employed hundreds of people. Blah, blah, blah.

“Here are some things you may not know about Leo Glass.” Her voice was very calm and soothing, as if she were talking to a small child, lulling him to sleep. She named some charitable organizations that flourished thanks to Leo’s generous contributions. Think of all those that benefited from his largesse, like the children in sub-Saharan Africa who wouldn’t contract malaria, all because of Leo and the mosquito nets he provided them, she said. The way she talked you’d think Leo had personally woven those nets and draped them over the bodies of dying kids.

She wrapped up her opening statements with a reflection on the future I’d denied Leo Glass. All the good he would never be able to do, life cut short, talent snuffed out.

Her tone shifted, right at the end. Went from soothing to a little regretful, a little angry. “It’s easy to talk about what a great guy Leo Glass was.” I didn’t know why she kept repeating his first and last name like that. “But he was more than a vibrant citizen, a passionate patron of the arts, a generous benefactor. He was also a son. A beloved son.”

As Linda talked about Leo’s mother, I could see that they made the right choice, choosing this woman to prosecute. She was in her fifties, with fluffy brown hair. She wore a strange, bulky mauve skirt suit. She looked like a mom. She was there to remind the jury of that fact: Leo had a mom. “A mother lost her son,” she said, her voice cracking, and she was done.

I resisted the temptation to turn around and find Leo’s mother in the crowd, though I’d spotted her earlier, sitting by another woman, her sister, perhaps. Leo’s aunt. I bowed my head and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out this image, this image I had of her in my mind’s eye, crying over the death of her beloved only child. I wasn’t acting this time. I was sorry. I wished—maybe for the first time—that I hadn’t done it.

The next morning I sat up in the front row, alone, waiting for Calvin to join me. I twisted in my seat nervously, craning my neck around to look for him. The judge entered the courtroom, and we all stood up. When he took his seat, we sat down, and Calvin still wasn’t there.

A moment later, he came bursting through the doors, then, apologizing to the court, demanded a minute to consult with his client. “One minute,” Judge Landsberger said, raising his bushy eyebrows. Calvin took his place next to me and slapped a file folder in front of me. We leaned over the folder, and Calvin circled his arm around it, the way a kid leans over a test so no one can cheat off him. “What is this?” I asked.

“You tell me, Rosemary,” he said.

I opened the folder, and my own face stared back at me, a picture of me from yesterday. I was turned around in my seat, my head tossed over my shoulder, my fingers lifted up in a wave. I was smiling—a huge, toothy grin, my eyes sparkling with what looked like either joy or mischief or some combination of both. The jaunty white silk bow tied at my chin.

Calvin flipped through the pages in the file. The same picture, over and over again, all of which looked like they’d been downloaded from the internet. Articles had been written, think pieces. My goofily grinning face was now a meme. “The better to eat you with, my dear,” and “Who me?” and, straight to the point, “GUILTY.”

“No,” I whispered.

“You know who Diane Downs is?” Of course I knew. She was way up there on the Buzzfeed list of our nation’s maddest murderesses. She drove her kids out to a secluded place and shot them while Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” bopped along on the radio. A wild-haired bogeyman did it, she said. No one believed her. When the prosecution played “Hungry Like the Wolf” in the courtroom, she didn’t break down and burst into tears. She snapped her fingers and sang along. “You know where Diane Downs is now?” Calvin didn’t wait for me to respond. “She’s in prison.”

“The jury won’t see the pictures. It’s the jury that—”

“They saw it,” Calvin said. “They were sitting right over there.” He jerked his head in their direction.

“Is everything okay, Counsel?” Judge Landsberger asked.

Calvin swept the folder up and rapped it against the table as if we’d settled something. “Everything’s fine, Your Honor,” he said.