Kateri says, “This is Mandy Donovan. She’s been brought up to speed on your case.”

Mandy shakes my hand and smiles, like she’s half surprised that I’m a normal person, a kid, not a deranged killer. She has strawberry-blond curls, freckles, a kelly-green suit.

They walk me down the windowed hallway to a small courtroom, and I wonder, for just enough of a second that it gives me a prickly nausea, what it would be like to be walked to a death chamber.

We don’t have the death penalty in New York.

Even if they convict me, it won’t happen. I’ll have years to sit it out.

I’m not the only one in the courtroom for arraignment. There are two other cases before me, a DUI and a domestic assault. The woman with the DUI pleads guilty, and the judge sets a further court date in December. The domestic case involves a restraining order and supervised visits with children. It’s a man in his thirties, with short hair and thick arms. He too gets another date. This is how it goes. They inch you along with further dates.

Where is Bear?

I wanted him to be here. I want to look over and see him, in a suit, his hair knotted behind his head. Wearing a pair of shoes that shine, that click on the tile floor. Watching me, believing in something. I just wanted him to be the thing that stops it all from going any further. The thing that saves me. The thing that causes the judge to say I’m free to go.

But there’s no one else here. No one but Kateri Fisher believes in me. After the first case, Detective Hurt comes in and leans to say something in Kateri’s ear that I can’t hear except for the word Buick.

I sit between Kateri and the lawyer, and I turn my head for just a fraction toward Kateri and say, “It’s him.” I say to her, “I’m sure of it.”

I hear her breathe through her teeth.

I feel like I’m at the very edge of a cliff and someone I can’t even see is about to push me off. I’ll fall and fall, and when I hit the bottom it’ll feel like falling into bed, except it will break all my bones.

She turns in the chair to face me, her legs crossed, and beside me, Mandy is struggling to hear us.

“Shannon,” Kateri whispers. “Does he smoke?”

“Yes,” I say. And the memory of it is suddenly sharp with fragrance, from the cigarettes, the whiskey, the smell of the pines underneath the wheels of the car, the damp smell of leaves. “Luckys,” I say. I feel my gut rising up against my lungs, shortening my breath.

“He has her, doesn’t he?” I say, a little too loud. “He has her.”

Kateri stares at me and hushes me. I notice the darkness under her eyes, that she has covered it with makeup. Her lashes are stiff and curled with mascara. Her eyes deep, deep brown.