People who he assumed were attorneys walked in and out with the casual gait of shoppers at a farmers’ market. Where was the drama? Shouldn’t these attorneys be under some modicum of stress? They were dealing with people’s lives—their freedoms—and not a one of them seemed to have a worry in the world. But then it occurred to Gavin that for them this is just another day at the office. Convictions and prison sentences were just words when you weren’t the one sitting in the box. And at the end of the day, the lawyers all went home.

Gavin settled into his chair and watched the goings-on, soon figuring out which table belonged to the prosecutors and which was reserved for defense attorneys. Prosecutors occupied the farther table, sitting like lords of the manor as they received a host of groveling defense attorneys whispering their requests with bowed backs.

One of the prosecutors, a younger woman who seemed less involved than the others, sat in the gallery just behind the others and held a single file on her lap. She read a document from that file over and over. Something about her held Gavin’s attention—the way her nose curved, or the line of her chin. He couldn’t put his finger on where or when, but he had seen her before.

The bailiff called for everyone in the room to rise.

A grim-faced woman with gray hair and a black robe entered and took a seat behind the bench. An administrator to her left handed her a stack of files, and she lifted the top one and called, “State of Minnesota versus Gavin Spencer.”

The sound of his name announced like that, official and damning, jarred him a bit. He stood, and the jailer pointed for Gavin to walk up to a podium in front of the judge’s bench.

“Sir, please state your name for the record,” the judge said.

“My name is Gavin Spencer.” The words slogged through the muck of his slur, causing the judge to pause as though she needed a second to understand—even though the file with his name on it lay right in front of her.

The judge then said, “And for the State?”

No answer came.

Gavin looked over his shoulder at the young woman he’d been trying to place. She now stood at the counsel table, her face pale, her fingers wrapped tightly around the edges of that file, her eyes locked on Gavin.

“For the State?” the judge repeated.

The young woman began to breathe heavily. And still no words came out of her mouth.

“Ms. Nash, are you okay?” the judge said.

Nash? Gavin looked closer at her face and chin and eyes, but it was the name that triggered the memory. In a flash, it all came flooding back with the chill of an April lake. It couldn’t be.