She looked through the withdrawal slips.
She looked at me.
She said: Mrs. Brooks, are these your signatures?
I said: no, Your Honor.
Thomas’s lawyer sighed.
He said: Your Honor, she has been claiming this for six months.
He said: there is no evidence that anyone else.
My lawyer stood up.
She said: there is a witness.
The room changed.
Not loudly.
The specific change that happens when information arrives that no one has prepared for.
Thomas’s smile stopped.
His mother’s hand went to her collar.
The blonde woman in the second row took her sunglasses off and then put them back on.
The judge looked at the second row.
She said: Is this the teller?
Mrs. Wilkes said: I am.
She stood up.
Her knees visibly shook.
She stood anyway.
She had driven forty-five minutes to stand in a courtroom in a county she had not lived in for twenty years and testify about something she had seen six months ago.
