Page 25 of Jury Woman, Part 2 of 6

"I know you love him. I just want you to be careful. With your body, I mean." I kept my voice even, though the words felt as inadequate now as they had the first time I'd tried them, months ago, over knitting needles in the den. "Those choices carry more weight than they seem to in the moment."

Lily's eyes rolled so completely I half expected to hear them click. "Oh my God. I'm not going to be a virgin forever, you know."

I inhaled for strength. "I know that. I'm not saying it isn't going to happen. I'm saying if you're careless, it could affect the rest of your life in ways you're not thinking about right now."

Something flickered across her face, quick and sharp. "Is that what happened to you? Was I the thing that wrecked your life?"

"No," I said, and meant it completely. "You were never that, Lily. Not for one single day."

"Then what happened?" Her voice climbed, thin and accusing. "Because it sure seems like everything went wrong the second you and Dad got married and had us."

"That's not true. But I won't pretend some damage hasn't been done along the way. To the marriage. To all of us." I searched for something steadier to add, some way to close the distance she'd just opened, but before I could find it, the screen went dark, Lily's face gone mid-frame, no goodbye, no warning, just the sudden absence where her expression had been a half-second before.

I sat there in the small room, the laptop's fan humming its indifferent note, and felt the tears rise before I'd given myself permission to cry, hot and sudden behind my eyes.

Deputy Wells was waiting by the door when I finally stood, and I kept my face angled away from him as I walked past, blinking hard. He didn't say anything, didn't ask, just fell into step beside me at his usual measured distance, and I was grateful, in that moment, for a man trained not to require explanations.

August 31, Monday

I CARRIED the weight of yesterday's phone call with me into the courtroom, Lily's crumpling face still sitting behind my eyes. I'd barely slept, turning over the same question until it wore a groove in my thinking: whether it was time to walk into chambers and tell Judge Arnold I needed to go home, whether my presence in that jury box had stopped being service and started being neglect.

I took my seat in the alternate section with that half-formed decision still unresolved, my knitting bag heavier on my shoulder than usual, though nothing in it had actually changed weight.

It was the empty seat that caught my attention before anything else did—Juror Number Nine, a soft-spoken postal worker who'd sat two rows over from me since the box had first filled in July, his usual spot conspicuously vacant. I glanced around, half expecting to spot him in the hallway or hear some ordinary explanation float past, but the seat simply stayed empty, and a current of quiet unease moved through the gallery the way it always did when something had shifted without explanation.

Judge Arnold entered a few minutes later, and I registered immediately that something in his bearing was different—not alarmed, exactly, but graver than his usual brisk efficiency.

"Before we resume," he said, settling behind the bench, "I have an administrative matter." He paused, and the pause itself felt significant, stretched a beat longer than his announcements usually ran. "Juror Number Nine has been dismissed from this jury for reasons that will remain confidential to this court."

The room absorbed it in silence. I thought, briefly, of the paralegal with the peppermints, of whatever unknown misstep had cost her a seat weeks ago, and wondered whether Juror Nine's dismissal had come from a similar failure of discretion, or something else entirely—something that made my stomach drop lower the longer I let myself consider it.

"As a result," the judge continued, "Alternate Juror Number One will be seated as a full member of this jury."

For a full second, the words simply didn't attach themselves to anything. Then the weight of them landed all at once, cold and absolute.

That was me.

"Alternate Juror Number One, please move into the seat previously occupied by Juror Number Nine."

I stood, aware of every eye in the gallery finding me at once, my legs carrying me the short distance to the empty seat. I settled into the chair, my knitting bag awkward in my lap, and felt the enormity of the shift settle over me with a physical weight I hadn't anticipated.

Alternate meant provisional. Alternate meant I could still, theoretically, watch this trial from a distance, absorb the testimony without carrying the full burden of what came after it. Full juror meant something else entirely—meant my name would be one of twelve attached to whatever verdict emerged from this, meant I would sit in a deliberation room and help decide whether a man capable of the things I'd heard described over the last two months would walk free or spend the rest of his life in prison.

I thought of the biography sitting half-finished on hotel stationery back in my room, the woman I'd been trying to locate in those pages—a woman who made decisions, who mattered, who counted for something beyond the logistics of everyone else's life.

I glanced toward the back wall, found Deputy Wells watching the jury box with his usual careful attention, and for just a moment his eyes met mine and held, something steady passing between us that felt almost like ballast.

Whatever I'd walked in here half-planning to ask the judge this morning, it wasn't happening now.

This was serious. I was all in now, whether I felt ready or not.

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