Page 19 of Jury Woman, Part 3 of 6

I squirmed. "Today's Lily's sixteenth birthday. I'm missing it."

"How do you feel about that?"

I considered lying, then didn't. "Not as bad as I probably should. Which is its own kind of terrible to admit out loud. Besides, everyone makes such a production out of birthdays now. Photo shoots, professional cakes, a whole hashtag. It wasn't like that when I was young."

"What was your sixteenth birthday like?"

The question caught me sideways. "Nothing, really. It came and went."

"No one acknowledged it?"

"My mother wasn't well. Sickly, and there were mental health struggles underneath, but nobody used those words back then. I ran the house, mostly—cooking, laundry, getting my little sister to school on time. A birthday wasn't really on anyone's radar, mine included."

Jill let that settle for a moment. "Is it possible," she said, gently, "that some part of you expects Lily to carry herself the way you had to carry yourself at that age?"

The question sat there, uncomfortably accurate. "Yes," I admitted. "Probably." I picked at the arm of the chair. "Can I tell you something awful?"

"You can tell me anything."

"Sometimes I don't like her very much. My own daughter. I love her—obviously I love her—but liking her is a different thing, and some days I don't know what to do with that."

"Most teenagers are fairly unlikeable," Jill said, matter-of-fact, no judgment in it at all. "That's not a secret confession. That's basic developmental biology."

"It's been worse since the divorce. She blames me for it—says I was too boring, that I drove her father away." My throat tightened. "She's said it more than once."

Jill's gaze stayed steady on me. "Do you agree with her?"

I hesitated long enough that the silence answered before I did. "Sometimes."

Jill didn't push further on that. Instead she picked the journal back up and turned it toward me, open to one of the flagged pages. "I'd like you to read this one. Out loud, if you're willing."

I recognized the entry before I found the exact lines—a night early on, before I'd been bumped up, when I'd written more honestly than I usually let myself. I read it silently first, my stomach dropping. I didn't ask to be excused when I had the chance. Some part of me wanted an excuse to be away from my family. To not be needed for a while.

I looked up. "What does that make me?"

"Completely normal," Jill said, without a flicker of hesitation. "Wanting distance from the people you love doesn't make you a bad mother. It makes you a person who was exhausted long before any of this started." She let that breathe for a moment, then added, "And it makes you Juror Number Twelve. You're going to be here for a while yet. I'd suggest using some of that time to think about what you actually want your family to look like when you go home—not just how to survive the day you walk back through the door, but what happens after."

I nodded, throat too tight to answer properly, and gathered my things.

Walking back down the corridor beside Deputy Wells, the truth of what Jill had said kept circling. I wasn't at all sure I was looking forward to the day I'd have to walk back into my house and figure out how to be needed again.

September 29, Tuesday

JUROR NUMBER eleven Yolanda Pruitt had a way of settling into a room that I'd started to notice more each week—not loud, not commanding attention, but somehow the room organized itself around her. She sat five seats down in the box, spine straight, hands folded in her lap during testimony with the composed stillness of someone who'd spent two decades running a church office and had long since stopped being rattled by drama.

Today's witness was a forensic accountant working through another volume of shell-company records, numbers stacking on numbers until even my knitting rhythm started to falter. I glanced over and caught Yolanda's eyes briefly closed, not asleep, just resting, the stillness of someone gathering herself rather than checking out. When they opened again a moment later, she caught me looking and gave a small, unbothered smile, entirely unembarrassed.

At the noon recess, I found myself beside her at the coffee station. The good creamer had already been claimed by others, leaving us both stuck with the powdered kind.

"I was praying," she said, before I could ask, answering the question I hadn't voiced. "Not about the case, don't worry—just for patience. This part always runs long, and my mind wanders if I don't give it somewhere to land."

"That sounds nice, actually. Having somewhere for it to land."

"It's kept me upright more years than I can count." She stirred the powdered creamer into her cup, unhurried. "I lost my husband young—car accident, our youngest was barely out of diapers—and I had four kids and a church full of people who all needed something from me at once. Somewhere in there I figured out that if I didn't have someplace to set the weight down, even for five minutes, I wasn't going to make it through."

"How old were you?"

"Twenty-nine. Same age as our Denise, if you can believe that. I look at her sometimes and think about how young twenty-nine actually is, though it certainly didn't feel that way at the time."