Jason has asked her to tell him all that she remembers about his father, and she plans to. Someday she will tell him all that he needs to know. But right now, she needs to get her job back so she can find out how it all ends, this trial that has distracted her for months now. Shelley feels so sorry for the wife and the children of this awful man, who have already moved away, and who can blame them? People often forget about the lives of those who are tied to such a person, and that their innocent lives are fucked up by it all when they are not responsible for any of it.

At one point in the trial, the murderer had told how heavy his wife had gotten, as if people needed to feel sorry for him, and then on a break, Shelley overheard one of the old people there to watch the show saying how that monster killed our girl. They called her “our girl”—such a nice endearment for someone who must have felt so estranged and lonely most of her life. Our girl.

“That’s a girl,” Shelley’s brother had said when he let go of the back of that small rusty bike, and thinking he was still right there beside her, she went pedaling down Cobb Road at full speed. That’s a girl, she sometimes tells herself. That’s a girl. And when that doesn’t work, she sings “I Have Confidence” and does her very best to channel Julie Andrews channeling Maria Von Trapp, though in her imagination she does not wear that really bad hat. She is going to get her job back, and she’ll get a letter from her brother and learn that he is just fine and has been all these years, that he’s right down the road, and everything is so much better now. Can’t wait to see you, Baby Sis. Please come see me! and Brent will come to see Harvey and realize what a mistake he made—What was I thinking? he’ll say—and Harvey and Jason will be happy and they will all settle in for a good supper and to watch a movie, and then they will all live happily ever after. Do you like my hat? No, no, I do not like your hat, but I really, really love you. And she is repeating that aloud—“I really, really love you”—when the phone rings and the person on the other end tells her to get to the courthouse as quickly as she can. They need her to come back to work, but the judge wants to speak to her first.