Lately, Shelley feels like someone who’s been hibernating, the way she knows she has taken on the mom look—the tug and longing of motherhood pulling you toward a kind of domestic hibernation, comfort food and easy clothes, hair pulled into ponytails, and face cleaned of makeup. As in nature—birds and beasts blending to hide and protect their nest or den—a warm, soft mama spreads her wings or paws to comfort and protect. “You don’t even try to look attractive,” Brent had said, or was that what the murderer had said? Yes, that is what the murderer had said of his wife: “She stopped trying to look attractive. She stopped being there for me as a partner. What man wouldn’t look elsewhere? Does that make me a murderer?”

What man wouldn’t look elsewhere? That was the line that got stuck in her head, playing the same part again and again. What man wouldn’t look elsewhere? A line that seemed to repeat itself as she watched all the women who had to take the stand during the trial—all of them preened and ready, wedding rings in full view, and diamond or pearl earrings, trails of perfume. They all were thin and tanned, with ropy muscles in their arms and calves, even though the skin of more than one was showing the sagginess of age. Linen sheaths, tailored suits, conservative colors. Shelley once heard a lawyer say that people on the witness stand should wear navy blue, because it suggests truth and dependability, only to go home that night and realize she owned nothing navy other than blue jeans and one pair of underwear. Shelley has seen a lot of these women elsewhere in town, and they looked very different when sporting clothes made for teenagers, short skirts and leotards, leopard and zebra prints—all those things that seem to say, Look at me, look at me. And such flamboyance is not a crime, and it certainly doesn’t invite violence, but Shelley has always been aware of how the louder one is, the more color visible, the easier the target. The picture of the young woman who was murdered was the opposite of these: she was well camouflaged, with dark rings of eye makeup—what Jason calls “goth”—and hair dyed and pulled up in a messy knot. That last night, there was no eye makeup at all, just a little bit of lip gloss, and she wore something very different, something more in keeping with the parade of women who had taken the stand, an expensive, conservative-looking silk blouse.