Page 16 of Jury Woman, Part 3 of 6

Josh sat beside her on the couch, hunched into himself, working at his thumbnail with a focus that had become its own kind of language over the past few weeks. I wanted to reach through the screen and pull his hand away from his mouth.

"Josh, how's soccer going?" I asked, grabbing for solid ground. "Are you starting this week?"

He shrugged, eyes fixed somewhere near his knees.

"Honey, talk to me. Even a little."

Nothing. Just the small, worrying motion of his jaw.

I turned back to Lily, trying again, softer this time. "How's cheer? Did you get your competition schedule yet?"

That was the wrong question, or maybe there was no right one left. Lily's face contorted, and before I fully registered what was happening, something small and hard—a phone case, I realized a beat too late—came flying at the camera. The picture jolted, tilted, caught the ceiling for a second before someone, presumably Josh, righted it.

"I hate you," Lily said, the words landing flat and absolute. "I actually hate you right now."

She was gone before I could answer, her footsteps loud even through the tinny laptop speaker, a door somewhere slamming hard enough that the sound crackled.

Josh sat alone in the frame for a moment, still picking at his nail, not looking at the camera. "I don't hate you," he said quietly, like it was a confession he hadn't meant to make. Then he stood too, and walked out of frame without another word, leaving nothing behind but an empty couch and the soft, oblivious hum of a television playing in another room.

I sat there a long time after the call disconnected on its own, staring at the dark rectangle where my children's faces had been. Deputy Wells said nothing from his post by the door, and I was grateful, in that moment, for his silence more than I'd ever been grateful for anything he'd said.

I thought about Lily's face right before she'd thrown whatever it was—not fury, exactly, but something closer to grief. I thought about Josh's ragged thumbnail, the words he could no longer find, the ones he'd finally managed—I don't hate you—offered like a small, fragile gift he wasn't sure I deserved.

I had wanted, when this began, to believe I was doing something important. Something that mattered beyond the walls of my own house. And maybe I still was. But sitting there in the wreckage of a five-minute phone call, I couldn't locate a version of "important" that made this hurt feel like it belonged to a good story instead of a mistake I couldn't undo.

September 24, Thursday

JUROR NUMBER nine Bettina Alvarez-Cruz crossed herself before the first witness took the stand this morning, quick and practiced, the kind of gesture so worn into habit it barely registered as devotion anymore—just something her hands did. I'd noticed her do it most mornings by now, a small private ritual before the day's testimony began, and there was something steadying about it, watching someone else brace themselves the same way I braced myself with a fresh row of stitches.

She sat one row down, closer to Ashanti, but during the break she drifted over while I dug through my bag for a stitch marker I'd dropped.

"You're always working on something," she said, nodding at the sage green blanket in my lap. "My sister does that too. Sews the whole day, then comes home and sews some more. I used to tell her she needed a hobby that wasn't just more of her job."

"What's your job, exactly? I know it's alterations."

"Bridal. My sister and I have a shop in Chamblee—well, she has it now, since I got dragged into all this." She laughed, but there was an edge under it. "Peak season. September, October, half of November—that's when every bride in metro Atlanta wants her dress taken in an inch before the big day. I left my sister with eleven fittings on the books and a system only I understand."

"That sounds brutal."

"It is what it is." She said it with a small shrug, but I caught the flicker underneath—resentment dressed up as resignation… when you've decided to be gracious about it in public and furious about it in private. I knew that feeling. Was it being passive-aggressive… or just going along to get along?

"Do you think God has a plan for why you got picked instead of somebody else?" I asked, half-joking, curious how she'd take it.

She considered the question seriously. "I think everything happens for a reason. Even the hard things. Especially the hard things." She glanced toward the courtroom doors. "I pray about it most mornings, honestly. Ask for patience. Ask that whatever we decide in the end, it's the right thing, not just the easy thing."

Something in the certainty of it needled at me more than it should have, raw as I still was from the phone hitting the camera and Lily's I hate you still echoing somewhere behind my ribs. "Must be nice," I said, "having that kind of clarity."

Bettina's eyebrows lifted slightly, catching the edge in my voice. "It's not clarity so much as trying not to drown," she said, gentler than I deserved. "Believe me, I don't feel steady half the time. I just don't let myself say so out loud very often."

I felt a small twist of shame at that, aware I'd been unfair, projecting my own bad morning onto her ordinary faith. "Sorry. Rough call with my kids yesterday."

"I could tell something was off." She didn't press for details, which I appreciated. "For what it's worth, I don't think there's a version of this where the people we love don't end up a little angry at us before it's over."

I smiled and nodded, grateful for the words. But as the recess ended and we filed back toward the box, I found myself wondering whether her steadiness might start to feel like something else entirely by month five or six, when my own doubts hadn't resolved into anything half so certain as her prayers.

But at least she had her faith to hang onto.

I had only my knitting to get me through.