The only other person in the room who could tell what truly happened was Tilly, Johnny’s younger sister, who was seven years old at the time and had not spoken since the stabbing. Not one word. She was, as the press reported breathlessly, “almost in a trance . . . mentally comatose . . . lost her memory . . . not speaking.... Poor thing! Traumatized by watching her brother’s girlfriend stab her father . . . or was it her brother who stabbed her father?”

The courtroom was noisy and chaotic. The rows were crammed with journalists and spectators who had managed to get in. No one could resist it: Betsy was young and beautiful. Johnny was young and handsome. And there was a dead dad.

Betsy should have been scared to death, but she wasn’t. All was lost. She knew it. Her baby, Rose, was gone. Even her own attorney said that she could get twenty years, maybe life. Maybe the death penalty. It looked premeditated. But none of that mattered. She wanted Rose and could not have her, or her beloved Johnny. Her depression was black and oppressive, sucking out all hope of light. She felt done with life and living. The only thing that kept her from killing herself in jail was her premonition, the one that showed her driving and crashing amidst fir trees and orange poppies.

Betsy was manhandled out of the van, two deputies beside her in bulletproof vests, more in front and behind. She could hardly walk, a few shuffles at a time. She had taken a shower the night before because the woman in the cell next to her, Devina—a woman who was addicted to heroin five years ago and bought and sold the drug to feed her habit—insisted she do so. The heroin addict had attended an Ivy League school. She’d crushed her knee skiing and become addicted to the pain medicine, which then morphed into the heroin addiction.

“Shower. Please, Betsy. You look . . .” Devina paused, shook her head.

“I don’t care how I look.”

“You should,” Devina said. “It’ll help you. You look like a ghost.”

Rainbow said, “Aquamarine. Carnation pink. Orange. You are many colors, Betsy. Let’s bring out the bright ones. Gold. Silver.”

So Betsy had showered and washed her thick black hair for the first time in a week.

Her eyes caught Johnny’s and held. She teared up, and so did he. They had exchanged letters the entire time they’d been in jail awaiting trial. They still loved each other. They had cried over the baby they knew they would probably never see again, their tears staining their letters. They had been realistic, but they had been clinging to hope, too. They had been deadly pessimistic, and they had been determined to get out one day to see their daughter.

I love you, they wrote. I love you so much.

The judge hammered his gavel. The trial began.

* * *