DeFiore pressed. “Lar, listen to me. I’m not fucking around. It’s a high-profile case, and they’ll make Billy pay for all the boys who got off easy. We’re looking at twenty years with no allowances. Your son won’t get out of prison until he’s forty, at the earliest.”

“Thank you, Peter.” Lawrence closed his eyes. “But no thank you.” His eyes were bloodshot. He reeked of last night’s gin. DeFiore had already hung up, but Lawrence still held the phone, ready to hit speed-dial and say he was wrong, we’ll take whatever pittance Anderson will give.

I started to speak when Lawrence interrupted me. “Sweetheart, look!”

Eleanor and I glanced up at the same time. Lawrence angled his phone, so we could both read the screen: “Rape Trial Kicks Off for Princeton Star Runner.”

The headline scared me. “Jesus,” I said. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

Eleanor scoffed. “Billy is innocent. He can’t plead guilty to something he didn’t do.”

“His innocence doesn’t matter,” Lawrence reminded her, “if DeFiore can’t persuade a jury of it. Eleanor, we have to consider the four years.”

“The stakes are high,” I added.

Eleanor studied us closely—first her husband, then me. “You two are in cahoots again? If you really feel that way, go home. I won’t have any negativity in court. Billy will be exonerated, and we will return to our lives.” She said this like it was a prophecy, but her sweet pink lips made it difficult to take her seriously.

On the other hand, maybe Eleanor is right. If appearances alone can determine the outcome, our side will win by a landslide. DeFiore’s team, along with our publicists and consultants, have coached us on what to wear, how to walk, when to sit, when to stand, when to ignore a question, when to respond, and what to say. Only the attorneys will be speaking today, but each of us is prepped and ready to achieve maximum positive impact.

Billy, for instance, strolls, hesitantly, on the balls of his feet, a sensitive young scholar, upset by all the attention. He is Eleanor’s son; and today, like her, he is unrecognizable. The astronaut headphones are gone, replaced by nerdy, black-rimmed glasses with non-prescription lenses. Thanks to a low-carb, high-protein diet, he’s twenty pounds lighter. Without the extra weight, his body is lankier and less physically imposing than at his arraignment. Wearing a fitted new suit and shiny leather shoes, my brother holds our mother’s arm, as if squiring her along a promenade. Beside him, Eleanor has on a nondescript tweed skirt suit and low-heeled pumps. Gigantic tortoiseshell sunglasses hide her eyes. Her hair is puffed-up from the wind. Earlier, she’d wrapped her head in an Hermès silk scarf to protect her blowout, but DeFiore nixed it the second he saw her with a gruff, “No, no, no. No way.”