“I wanted to know if you had anything to add. Maybe you want to tell the jury that Ms. Goodwin confessed to you?”

The jurors now get the joke. Most of them are smiling. Richard is not, however. He looks angry. Like a man using every ounce of his self-control to not spring out of the witness box and knock those smiles off the jurors’ faces.

“Please answer my question,” LeMarcus says.

“What question?” Richard says, still gritting his teeth.

“I’m asking you quite simply, Mr. Trofino, if you now want to testify, under oath, that when you were in Ms. Goodwin’s office, at a time when you claim that you did not take her cell phone to put your own plan of murder in motion, that instead Ms. Goodwin told you that it was her plan to use her own cell phone to text your wife later that day to meet her in Central Park and then, when your wife showed up, to murder her.”

Ella objects. “Argumentative.”

LeMarcus smiles broadly. “I’ll withdraw it. I think we all know it doesn’t matter what Mr. Trofino says.”

After Ella rests her case, LeMarcus makes a halfhearted motion for a directed verdict. Judge Gold quickly rejects it. Although that ruling isn’t unexpected, it still jabs at my heart. The judge has ruled that the prosecution has met its burden of proof. In other words, that the evidence is sufficient for the jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that I murdered Lauren Wright.

“Does the defense plan on putting on a case, Mr. Burrows?” Judge Gold asks.

“We do. Our first witness is Stuart Goodwin.”

Watching my husband walk to the witness stand for some reason causes me to flash back to my walk down the wedding aisle. Aside from the fact that Stuart’s blond curls are now almost entirely gone, replaced by a shiny, bald pate, he doesn’t look much different. He’s the same weight as he was on our wedding day—something he’s quietly proud of—and Father Time hasn’t laid a hand on his face. He doesn’t even have crow’s feet around the eyes, whereas mine tell the world that I’m no longer in my thirties.

With his hand raised, Stuart swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help him God. He looks nervous in the chair and fidgets a little to get comfortable. His hands rest in his lap, and he rubs his fingers together like a nervous Nellie.

No matter how much you practice with a witness, you can’t break them of their little tics. More often than not, who they are comes through to the jurors. The twelve men and women who are passing judgment on me probably already have a fair impression of my husband before he utters a single word.