Richard has made a point of calling me every night after the trial. I felt that I owed him this time, as the court’s sequestration order meant that his only window into what was unfolding was what I told him on those calls and what he read in the news. Still, I dreaded talking to him. There wasn’t a single conversation that didn’t involve his screaming at me about how it was playing out. I told him that the defense wasn’t getting anywhere with its strategy of blaming him, even as I wondered whether that was true.

Last night, I prepared him for this testimony. He was no more pleased with me than he had been during our phone conversations. Even my victory regarding the text didn’t satisfy him.

The one thing that emerged quite clearly from these discussions was that, the more time I spend in Richard’s company, the more it seems to me that he does in fact have the hair-trigger temper of a man who might just kill his wife. Needless to say, I am hoping to keep that side of him from the jury.

I begin my examination by asking Richard how long he and Lauren were married. This was intended to be a soft lob, but his back stiffens slightly. He pauses for a moment to rub his eyes before answering.

“It would have been sixteen years this coming February fourteenth,” he says, acting as if he’s still not accustomed to discussing her in the past tense, even though I’ve seen him do it countless times before with much less drama.

“Please describe the state of your marriage in the last year.”

“I don’t know quite how to answer that. I can tell you what I thought it was, and then I can tell you what I learned about in the course of this trial . . . the investigation.”

We had rehearsed that I would ask a deliberately complicated question so that Richard could correct me, just as he did.

“Tell the jury your thoughts about your marriage in the past twelve months.”

“I was very happy,” he says through a strained smile, now looking directly at the jury. Again, just as we practiced. “But I’m not going to overly romanticize it. After as many years as we’d been together, we had our issues. Quirks that bothered the other one, that kind of thing. But that type of longevity also strengthens your bond and brings you into a period where you know that this person is your person, until . . . well, I was about to say until death do you part.”

I would have preferred he not say that. Some jurors might conclude that was the only way Richard could get out of a bad marriage.

“And more recently, since your wife’s murder, have you come to a different conclusion about the state of your marriage in the past year?”