She looked at Eli, sitting beside me in a plain gray sweater, because I had put the London blazer in a bag in the closet where it could not say anything to anyone.
“Young man.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You said something to me in September.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’d like you to say something else now, if you’d like to. You don’t have to.”
Eli thought about it the way he thinks about everything, with his whole face.
Then he looked across the aisle at his father, in the charcoal suit, with the watch, and the three lawyers, and the hundred and twenty people, and said, clearly, the way an eight-year-old says the truth when someone finally asks for it.
“Dad can’t give me the mom I need.”
Nobody in that courtroom moved.
Spencer sat down.
He did not look at the door again.
PART 5 — FINAL
We did not move.
