Page 16 of Jury Woman, Part 2 of 6

"Inside 4471 Delridge, agents recovered approximately eleven kilograms of product," Foster said, his voice flat with procedural precision, "along with digital scales, packaging materials, and a ledger written in what we later determined was a coded numerical system."

The prosecutor displayed a page from the ledger, rows of numbers and abbreviations that meant nothing to me and, apparently, everything to the analyst who followed Foster to the stand—a soft-spoken woman who spent the better part of an hour translating columns of digits into dollar amounts, dates, and product disguised as fruit. Apples. Oranges. Peaches.

I resumed knitting, my fingers finding the rhythm of the pattern without having to look. Purl two, knit two, the yellow yarn pooled in my lap.

Then came the confidential informant—it was a piece of theater to see how the witness stand had been altered to allow the person to be obscured behind a screen, and their voice disguised into something flat and mechanical. It was impossible to tell if the witness was male or female. The voice described meetings in the back rooms of a laundromat, coded phrases exchanged over prepaid phones, the particular vocabulary of a business that couldn't advertise itself.

Throughout the testimony, Robert Blackthorne was sitting forward and riveted on the screen. He was clearly trying to figure out who was testifying against him. I wondered if the person testifying was afraid…

Then I tried to see it from the defense side. What if the person was testifying for some kind of payback?

With only a disembodied voice, it was harder to get a bead on the sincerity of the witness… which made me realize how much I rely on a person's appearance and demeanor to determine if they're trustworthy.

Did that mean I was prejudiced?

The witness continued, "You didn't say 'drugs.' You said 'the shipment's running late' or 'tell him the invoice needs adjusting.' Everybody knew what it meant. Nobody said it plain."

It made me think of how we all talk in code. I thought of the shorthand Warren and I had developed over seventeen years—fine meaning not fine, we'll talk later meaning we will absolutely not, I'm tired covering for things far heavier than fatigue. Every marriage had its ledger, I supposed, its own private language for saying one thing while meaning another.

The informant's testimony wound through names that were already familiar—names who meant nothing to me mere days ago. The prosecutor asked whether Robert Blackthorne's name had ever come up in these coded exchanges.

"Not by name," the informant said. "Nobody said his name. You just said 'the man' or 'upstairs.' Like he was weather. Something that happened to you, not someone you talked about directly."

I glanced, involuntarily, toward the defense table. Blackthorne sat with his hands folded, watching the informant's silhouette with a murderous expression. In that moment, I believed he was capable of killing with his bare hands.

August 19, Wednesday

JOSH ANSWERED the call with a slice of pizza folded in half, halfway to his mouth, and behind him Lily slumped onto the couch with the boneless posture of someone who'd been crying recently.

"Hey, guys."

"Hey," Josh managed around a mouthful of crust.

Lily didn't say anything at all, just stared at some point below the camera, her eyes rimmed pink, jaw set in the particular way that meant she was either about to cry again or about to say something designed to wound.

"This whole thing is insane," she finally said, voice thick. "When are you coming home?"

"I don't know, sweetheart. It's probably going to be a while longer."

Her chin wobbled, and for a second I thought that might be the whole of it—just grief, just a sixteen-year-old missing her mother. Then something hardened behind her eyes instead.

"Well, you should probably hurry," she said, with a brittle little laugh that had no warmth in it at all. "Or Heidi's going to redecorate the whole house before you get back."

Heat climbed my neck. I pictured Heidi Hoyt's manicured hand pulling my slightly dated curtains off their rods and putting up sheers and replacing the worn denim sofa with something modern and cool. Bizarrely, the thought flashed through my mind, Go for it, Heidi. I didn't hate the idea of coming home to a newly decorated house.

"I'm sure that's not going to happen," I said instead.

Lily shrugged, already retreating back into herself, apparently satisfied with the damage.

"How's school going?" I asked, redirecting because it was the only tool I had left. "Are you two sleeping all right?"

"I fell asleep in Chemistry yesterday," Josh offered, not looking up from the pizza. "Does that count?"

"Josh."

"What? I'm just answering the question."

"Lily?"