He unclicks his seat belt and slides closer to me. Whatever he’s about to say, he wants to make sure it is not overheard by the driver. Leaning in, he whispers, “You have an important decision to make, and you have to make it right now. If you want to go for an acquittal, this is the only way. We force the prosecution to put on a case it hasn’t yet completed investigating. But if you’re conceding the verdict is going to go against you, then you’re absolutely right that the calculation is completely the opposite. Right now, you’re free. You won’t be after trial—if you’re conceding conviction.”

He stops and waits a beat. Then, after another, he says, “I’m not ready to concede. Are you?”

That evening, I explain to Stuart what occurred in court, including the news that my fate will be known before New Year’s. Stuart nods but doesn’t otherwise respond to the moved-up timetable for a good thirty seconds.

“That’s good,” he finally says. “We can be in . . . wherever by the first of the year.”

This is Stuart’s way of saying that I’m going to be acquitted, and that after I’m found not guilty, we’re going to escape New York and leave all of our troubles behind. It’s a topic he’s raised before, telling me that he’d like to relocate to a place where his salary alone will be enough to support us, which will allow me to spend as much time as I want with Jacob. Preferably somewhere warmer, he says, like a southern college town. He references Charlottesville, Virginia, and Columbia, South Carolina, as places with good public schools and interesting people. He imagines us in an old Victorian house, one with a drawing room and a fireplace crackling in the library, a small garden out back that I can tend while Jacob plays in the tree house beside it.

It’s a seductive fantasy at times. So much so that there are even days when I imagine myself puttering around in that garden, a baseball cap of some college team I’ve never heard of shielding me from the sun, with Jacob on the swing set beside me.

When Stuart first broached this idea, I asked him if he truly believed that a happily-ever-after ending was possible for us. He didn’t waver.

“I’m certain of it. I love you, and I think you love me. And I know we both love Jacob. Nothing else really matters besides that.”

But of course, a lot of other things matter. Not the least of which is whether I’m found guilty of murder.

PART FIVE

PART FIVE

43. ELLA BRODEN

43.

ELLA BRODEN

I begin as I always start an opening statement, by saying, “The People will prove that the defendant, Dana Goodwin, is guilty.” Then I point at the accused.