My hands were folded on the table, and my legal pad lay open beside them.
For the past two hours, I had barely spoken.
I hadn’t interrupted when my mother described me as emotionally troubled.
I hadn’t objected when my father called me a disappointment.
And when Mr. Whitman finished questioning each of them and invited me to cross-examine, I had declined.
That decision seemed to delight my father.
He had always mistaken silence for surrender.
When I was sixteen, silence meant I accepted his opinion.
When I was twenty-five, silence meant I had nothing worth saying.
At thirty-eight, apparently, it meant I was too frightened to defend myself in court.
He leaned toward the microphone.
“She’s always been like this,” he continued. “She gets involved in something, makes a mess, and then expects somebody else to clean it up.”
My mother lowered her eyes.
She didn’t look at me.
