Oh no, but what was objected to? She has worked in the court with this particular judge many times, a middle-aged woman who makes Judge Judy seem like Glinda the Good Witch, and of all the judges, she is the one most people are afraid to get. They say she has had death threats, and that some lawyers do everything they can not to get her. They call her the Ice Queen and say she will chew nails and spit tacks, that she is known for giving the harshest sentences, especially when women and children have been harmed. She also has the best clothes that Shelley has ever seen.

Perhaps this particular case has haunted her even more than normal because the girl was not unlike who Shelley once was, a young woman raising a little boy alone, someone who had not been dealt a good hand but had still survived the childhood part and was slowly getting some traction. And on top of that, this was someone people loved, an underdog of sorts who was actually making a go of it all. In fact, that young woman was so loved by a circle of nice people that Shelley has even found herself feeling a little bit envious of the care and concern that had existed for her. And how stupid is that? The girl is dead, found dead right there in her own little apartment, there in a chair that had once belonged to her mother; that’s what the friend of the young woman said on the witness stand. And Shelley realized she has nothing that belonged to her own mother except her blue eyes. Or did she? Maybe she has something tucked away somewhere, and she made a note that day, to look, to search, to see, or did she agree with her brother that she wanted absolutely nothing? All of that is so hard to remember sometimes, the pieces out of focus.

But imagine a chair being your prized possession even though it connects you to such a sad legacy; the young woman’s mother had ended her own life, and the murderer, thinking he was so smart, had staged it all so it looked as if the young woman had simply followed the same path. The part Shelley keeps thinking about is the courage of the person who could have that chair and love it in spite of all the reminders. The woman on the witness stand described a fighter, that girl, someone determined to get beyond it all, to not be scarred by her mother’s poor choices, to not raise her young son the way she had been raised. “She was so strong,” the woman said. “We were all betting on her,” and she looked over to a whole gathering of people, most of them really old, who were nodding and wiping their eyes.