I’d stayed away from the news and social media since my release, but it would have taken immersion in an isolation chamber for me to completely block out my case. It’s everywhere: tabloid headlines, cable news shows, Twitter. From every window of our house, I can see the reporters continuing their vigil. I know that even more will await me when I arrive at LeMarcus Burrows’s office.

For that very reason, LeMarcus offered to meet me off-site. I declined, recognizing that being stalked is my new reality and it’s better to face it than to hide. LeMarcus coached me on how to act as I made my way into his building—look straight ahead, smile but not like I’m enjoying myself, don’t run but don’t dawdle either.

An hour later, I traverse the press gauntlet in front of LeMarcus’s building. Reporters shout out questions that they couldn’t have expected me to answer.

“Did you kill Lauren Wright?”

“Were you in love with her?”

“Why’d you do it?”

It takes all my self-control not to run away, but I walk straight ahead into the building. Not too fast or too slow, with a half smile front and center.

The nondescript midtown high-rise that houses the law offices of LeMarcus Burrows and Associates is one of the many buildings in this city that is more than forty floors tall, but it was built without a household-name anchor tenant or owner, so it has no descriptor. Unlike, say, the Chrysler Building or the Seagram Building, or anything called Trump.

I take the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. When the doors open, a sign points to the left. At the end of the corridor are glass doors with the firm’s name in large, gold letters.

In my prior life, I never visited defense attorneys. It was a point of principle in the DA’s office that defense lawyers traveled to see us, not the other way around.

The firm’s name also graces the entry wall, this time in silver letters each about half a foot high. Beneath them is an African American man sitting behind what appears to be an antique desk. He’s immaculately dressed in a gray, three-piece tweed suit, his tie held in place with a shiny silver tie bar. He looks like he could otherwise be a lawyer, but for the fact that he’s in the position occupied by the firm’s receptionist.

“LeMarcus is on a conference call with a court right now, so he asked me to bring you back to the conference room,” the man says without introducing himself.