Lulu, keeper of the hearth, was waiting at the door.

II

They made me go to court.

Lulu was wearing a fitted blue dress that stopped at her knees, and a pair of high heels that made her calves discreetly convex. Dave wore a black T-shirt and jeans. I was trussed up in a green skirt and blouse with cuffs that clenched at my wrists. Since we weren’t regular churchgoing folks, it wasn’t every day I was forced to present myself in such a manner. The clothes made me uncomfortable even more than the dozens of appraising eyes, all of which were pointed at me.

“And then he what?” the lawyer pressed.

My eyes lurched around the room and caught Dave, who flashed me a wink and a lopsided grin of sympathy. I sat up straighter. “Then he lifted up the gun and he started shooting at me.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, mister—I ran like the devil knew my name.”

The defense attorney also asked me a round of questions about my early “episodes” in school, trying to convince the jury that I might have provoked the assault, or even imagined it. But my family’s lawyer had bullets dug out of trees and rocks waiting in a sealed plastic bag, and the other guy couldn’t much argue with those.

I indignantly related the rest of my testimony while the defendant, Malachi Dufresne, sat dourly silent with his hands twisted into a pair of knobby fists. He never looked at me once. He never raised his eyes, not even when his great-aunt took the stand to tell the courtroom what a nice boy he was.

She said it in a mellow accent that sounded like his.

“He’s such a good boy. Always has been. Ever since he was a small thing and his parents used to leave him at my home for the summers. He was always so kind to the horses. He’s nothing but gentle. I’m sure there’s some good reason he came after that child, or at least he thought he had a good reason. My poor nephew needs a doctor, not a prison. If y’all would just let me have him I could get him the best money can buy.”

Dave leaned over and whispered in Lulu’s ear, mimicking the old woman’s scratchy southern voice. “I’m filthy rich. Don’t you dare send him to jail.”

Lulu nudged him in the ribs and whispered angrily, or maybe fearfully, back. “You stop that. She’s got money enough to see it done.” And she was right. When the end finally came a few weeks later, the man in charge of jurors’ row announced that Malachi should go to a hospital to be evaluated.

Dave shot to his feet, nearly jerking my arm off as he rose. “That’s not enough!”