Page 22 of Jury Woman, Part 2 of 6

"Of course it does. I think you'd regret it if you quit. Maybe not right away, but later."

"Mom, when are you coming home?"

"As soon as my service is done, sweetheart."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

He didn't respond to that, just kept scratching behind Tucker's ears, and I pressed forward gently. "Hang in there, okay? Keep your grades up. And don't make any rash decisions about soccer. You've worked hard for that spot."

"Maybe," he said, unconvinced, and then, almost as an afterthought, added, "Heidi picked me up from practice Tuesday."

Something in my chest tightened.

"Someone asked if she was my mom." His voice stayed even, but something underneath it had gone thin. "I just said no."

I swallowed hard. "That must have felt strange."

He didn't answer, just kept petting Tucker, who'd lifted his head slightly, tail giving one slow thump against the couch cushion.

"Are you taking good care of him?" I asked, gesturing toward the dog, grateful for anywhere else to point the conversation.

"Yeah. I am." Tucker barked once, a small affirming punctuation, and for a second Josh almost smiled.

Then, without warning, his face crumpled entirely, and he stood up so fast the camera caught only a blur of motion before he walked out of frame. Tucker scrambled after him, then I heard the sound of a door slamming.

I sat there, staring at an empty section of our living room, the same couch, the same window, nobody in it now. Then Tucker, who'd apparently given up the chase, returned to sit directly in front of the laptop, panting, unaware of the small disaster that had just occurred.

"Hey, Tucker," I said, my voice cracking slightly on his name.

He tilted his head at the sound of it, ears pricking, and I found myself talking to my dog for the last ninety seconds of my allotted time, saying nothing important, just his name, just good boy. Then even he left.

Deputy Wells signaled from the doorway that my time was up. I closed the laptop on an empty living room.

August 27, Thursday

I'D CAST on the fourth blanket in a soft sage green, but three rows in I already knew something was off—the tension was too tight in places, too loose in others. My hands, usually so reliable they could work without consulting the rest of me, kept betraying small errors this morning, and I suspected it had less to do with the yarn and more to do with what I'd carried into the courtroom with me after yesterday's call with Josh.

The witness on the stand was a woman named Renata Cole, and from the moment she settled into the chair, something in her stillness told me this testimony belonged to a different category than what had come before. She sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap, and when the prosecutor asked her to state her relationship to the case, her voice wavered before steadying.

"I'm the widow of Horatio Alvarez."

Her words landed heavily in the room. I recalled from Detective Terry's testimony weeks ago, the unsolved case, the corroborated alibi that had let Blackthorne walk away from suspicion once already.

"Can you describe the last time you spoke with your husband?"

"He called me from the parking garage. Said he was five minutes from home, asked if I wanted him to pick up milk." Her voice thinned but didn't break. "That was the last thing my husband ever said to me. Milk."

I dropped a stitch. I felt it go, the small give of yarn slipping free of the needle, and for once I didn't reach immediately for the crochet hook, just let it sit there, unraveling a half-row while I listened.

The prosecutor walked her through the aftermath with obvious care—the knock at the door, the two detectives standing on her porch with mournful expressions, the eighteen months since spent raising two small children who still asked when their father was coming home from work.

"Did you know your husband had testified against an associate of the defendant's, prior to his death?"

"Not until after. He never told me. I think he didn't want me to worry."

Bryan Stone approached his cross-examination with visible caution, as though he understood that any misstep here would cost the defense.