by Jodi Picoult
Jordan walked toward her. “Tell me about Joey.”
“Everybody liked Joey. He was smart, an excellent athlete. He could relate just as easily to adults as he could to kids his own age. He . . . well, he cut a swath through that school.”
“You must have been very proud of him.”
“I was. But I think that because of Joey, teachers and students had a certain sort of idea in mind for a Houghton boy, before Peter even arrived. And when he did get there, and people realized he wasn’t like Joey, it only made things worse for him.” She watched Peter’s face transform as she spoke, like the change of a season. Why hadn’t she taken the time before, when she had it, to tell Peter that she understood? That she knew Joey had cast such a wide shadow, it was hard to find the sunlight?
“How old was Peter when Joey died?”
“It was at the end of his sophomore year.”
“That must have been devastating for the family,” Jordan said.
“It was.”
“What did you do to help Peter deal with his grief?”
Lacy glanced down at her lap. “I wasn’t in any shape to help Peter. I had a very hard time helping myself.”
“What about your husband? Was he a resource for Peter then?”
“I think we were both just trying to make it through one day at a time.... If anything, Peter was the one who was holding the family together.”
“Mrs. Houghton, did Peter ever say that he wanted to hurt people at school?”
Lacy’s throat tightened. “No.”
“Was there ever anything in Peter’s personality that led you to believe he was capable of an act like this?”
“When you look into your baby’s eyes,” Lacy said softly, “you see everything you hope they can be . . . not everything you wish they won’t become.”
“Did you ever find any plans or notes to indicate that Peter was plotting this event?”
A tear coursed down her cheek. “No.”
Jordan softened his voice. “Did you look, Mrs. Houghton?”
She thought back to the moment she’d cleared out Joey’s desk; how she’d stood over the toilet and flushed the drugs she’d found hidden in his drawer. “No,” Lacy confessed. “I didn’t. I thought I was helping him. After Joey died, all I wanted to do was keep Peter close. I didn’t want to invade his privacy; I didn’t want to fight with him; I didn’t want anyone else to ever hurt him. I just wanted him to be a child forever.” She glanced up, crying harder now. “But you can’t do that, if you’re a parent. Because part of your job is letting them grow up.”
There was a clatter in the gallery as a man in the back stood up, nearly upending a television camera. Lacy had never seen him before. He had thinning black hair and a mustache; his eyes were on fire. “Guess what,” he spat out. “My daughter Maddie is never going to grow up.” He pointed at a woman beside him, and then further forward on a bench. “Neither is her daughter. Or his son. You goddamned bitch. If you’d done your job better, I could still be doing my job.”
The judge began to smack his gavel. “Sir,” he said. “Sir, I have to ask you to—”
“Your son’s a monster. He’s a fucking monster,” the man yelled, as two bailiffs reached his seat and grabbed him by the upper arms, dragging him out of the courtroom.
Once, Lacy had been present at the birth of an infant that was missing half its heart. The family had known that their child would not live; they chose to carry through with the pregnancy, in the hope that they could have a few brief moments on this earth with her before she was gone for good. Lacy had stood in a corner of the room as the parents held their daughter. She didn’t study their faces; she just couldn’t. Instead, she focused on the medical needs of that newborn. She watched it, still and frost-blue, move one tiny fist in slow motion, like an astronaut navigating space. Then, one by one, her fingers unfurled and she let go.
Lacy thought of those miniature fingers, of slipping away. She turned to Peter. I’m so sorry, she mouthed silently. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
* * *
Once the judge had called for a recess and the jury had filed out, Jordan moved toward the bench. “Judge, the defense asks to be heard,” he said. “We’d like to move for a mistrial.”
Even with his back to her, he could feel Diana rolling her eyes. “How convenient.”
“Well, Mr. McAfee,” the judge said, “on what grounds?”
The grounds that I’ve got absolutely nothing better to salvage my case, Jordan thought. “Your Honor, there’s been an incredibly emotional outburst from the father of a victim in front of the jury. There’s no way that kind of speech can be ignored, and there’s no instruction you can give them that will unring that bell.”
“Is that all, Counselor?”
“No,” Jordan said. “Prior to this, the jury may not have known that family members of the victims were sitting in the gallery. Now they do—and they also know that every move they make is being watched by those same people. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure to put on a jury in a case that’s already extremely emotional and highly publicized. How are they supposed to put aside the expectations of these family members and do their jobs fairly and impartially?”
“Are you kidding?” Diana said. “Who did the jury think was in the gallery? Vagrants? Of course it’s full of people who were affected by the shootings. That’s why they’re here.”
Judge Wagner glanced up. “Mr. McAfee, I’m not declaring a mistrial. I understand your concern, but I think I can address it with an instruction to the jurors to disregard any sort of emotional outburst from the gallery. Everyone involved in this case understands that emotions are running high, and that people may not always be able to control themselves. However, I’ll also issue a cautionary instruction to the gallery to restrain themselves, or I will close the courtroom to observers.”
Jordan sucked in his breath. “Please do note my exception, Your Honor.”
“Of course, Mr. McAfee,” he said. “See you in fifteen minutes.”
As the judge exited for chambers, Jordan headed back to the defense table, trying to divine some sort of magic that would save Peter. The truth was, no matter what King Wah had said, no matter how clear the explanation of PTSD, no matter if the jury completely empathized with Peter—Jordan had forgotten one salient point: they would always feel sorrier for the victims.
Diana smiled at him on her way out of the courtroom. “Nice try,” she said.
* * *
Selena’s favorite room in the courthouse was tucked near the janitor’s closet and filled with old maps. She had no idea what they were doing in a courthouse instead of a library, but she liked to hide up there sometimes when she got tired of watching Jordan strut around in front of the bench. She’d come here a few times during the trial to nurse Sam on the days they didn’t have a sitter to watch him.
Now she led Lacy into her haven and sat her down in front of a world map that had the southern hemisphere as its center. Australia was purple, New Zealand green. It was Selena’s favorite. She liked the red dragons painted into the seas, and the fierce storm clouds in the corners. She liked the calligraphed compass, drawn for direction. She liked thinking that the world might look completely different from another angle.
Lacy Houghton had not stopped crying, and Selena knew she had to—or the cross-examination was going to be a disaster. She sat down beside Lacy. “Can I get you something? Soup? Coffee?”
Lacy shook her head and wiped her nose with a tissue. “I can’t do anything to save him.”
“That’s Jordan’s job,” Selena said, although to be frank, she couldn’t imagine a scenario for Peter that did not involve serious jail time. She racked her brain, trying to think of what else she could say or do to calm Lacy down, just as Sam reached up and yanked on one of her braids.
Bingo.
“Lacy,” Selena said. “Do you mind holding him while I look for something in my bag?”
Lacy lifte
d her gaze. “You . . . you don’t mind?”
Selena shook her head and transferred the baby to her lap. Sam stared up at Lacy, diligently trying to fit his fist in his mouth. “Gah,” he said.
A smile ghosted across Lacy’s face. “Little man,” she whispered, and she shifted the baby so that she could hold him more firmly.
“Excuse me?”
Selena turned to see the door crack open and Alex Cormier’s face peek inside. She immediately stood up. “Your Honor, you can’t come in—”
“Let her,” Lacy said.
Selena stepped back as the judge walked into the room and sat down beside Lacy. She put a Styrofoam cup on the table and reached out, smiling a little as Sam grabbed onto her pinky finger and tugged on it. “The coffee here is awful, but I brought you some anyway.”
“Thanks.”
Selena moved gingerly behind the stacks of maps until she was standing behind the two women, watching them with the same stunned curiosity she’d have shown if a lioness cozied up to an impala instead of eating it.
“You did well in there,” the judge said.
Lacy shook her head. “I didn’t do well enough.”
“She won’t ask you much on cross, if anything.”
Lacy lifted the baby to her chest and stroked his back. “I don’t think I can go back in there,” she said, her voice hitching.
“You can, and you will,” the judge said. “Because Peter needs you to.”
“They hate him. They hate me.”
Judge Cormier put her hand on Lacy’s shoulder. “Not everyone,” she said. “When we go back, I’m going to be sitting in the front row. You don’t have to look at the prosecutor. You just look at me.”
Selena’s jaw dropped. Often, with fragile witnesses or young children, they’d plant a person as a focal point to make testifying less scary. To make them feel that out of that whole crowd of people, they had at least one friend.
Sam found his thumb and started to suck on it, falling asleep against Lacy’s chest. Selena watched Alex reach out, stroke the dark marabou tufts of her son’s hair. “Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you’re young,” the judge said to Lacy. “But I don’t think we make any fewer when we’re grown up.”
* * *
As Jordan walked into the holding cell where Peter was being kept, he was already doing damage control. “It’s not going to hurt us,” he announced. “The judge is going to give the jury instructions to disregard that whole outburst.”
Peter sat on the metal bench, his head in his hands.
“Peter,” Jordan said. “Did you hear me? I know it looked bad, and I know it was upsetting, but legally, it isn’t going to affect your—”
“I need to tell her why I did it,” Peter interrupted.
“Your mother?” Jordan said. “You can’t. She’s still sequestered.” He hesitated. “Look, as soon as I can get you to talk to her, I—”
“No. I mean, I have to tell everyone.”
Jordan looked at his client. Peter was dry-eyed; his fists rested on the bench. When he lifted his gaze, it wasn’t the terrified face of the child he’d sat beside in court on the first day of the trial. It was someone who had grown up, overnight.
“We’re getting out your side of the story,” Jordan said. “You just have to be patient. I know this is hard to believe, but it’s going to come together. We’re doing the best we can.”
“We’re not,” Peter said. “You are.” He stood up, walking closer to Jordan. “You promised. You said it was our turn. But when you said that, you meant your turn, didn’t you? You never intended for me to get up there and tell everyone what really happened.”
“Did you see what they did to your mother?” Jordan argued. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you if you get up there and sit in that witness box?”
In that instant, something in Peter broke: not his anger, and not his hidden fear, but that last spider-thread of hope. Jordan thought of the testimony Michael Beach had given, about how it looked when the life left a person’s face. You did not have to witness someone dying to see that.
“Jordan,” Peter said. “If I’m going to spend the rest of my life in jail, I want them to hear my side of the story.”
Jordan opened his mouth, intending to tell his client absolutely fucking not, he would not be taking the stand and ruining the tower of cards Jordan had created in the hope of an acquittal. But who was he kidding? Certainly not Peter.
He took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Tell me what you’re going to say.”
* * *
Diana Leven didn’t have any questions for Lacy Houghton, which—Jordan knew—was most likely a blessing. In addition to the fact that there wasn’t anything the prosecutor could ask her that hadn’t been covered better by Maddie Shaw’s father, he hadn’t known how much more stress Lacy could take without being rendered incomprehensible on the stand. As she was escorted from the courtroom, the judge looked up from his file. “Your next witness, Mr. McAfee?”
Jordan inhaled deeply. “The defense calls Peter Houghton.”
Behind him, there was a flurry of activity. Rustling, as reporters dug fresh pens out of their pockets and turned to a fresh page on their pads. Murmurs, as the families of the victims traced Peter’s steps to the witness stand. He could see Selena off to one side, her eyes wide at this unplanned development.
Peter sat down and stared only at Jordan, just as he’d told him to. Good boy, he thought. “Are you Peter Houghton?”
“Yes,” Peter said, but he wasn’t close enough to the microphone for it to carry. He leaned forward and repeated the word. “Yes,” he said, and this time, an unholy screech from the PA system rang through the courtroom speakers.
“What grade are you in, Peter?”
“I was a junior when I got arrested.”
“How old are you now?”
“Eighteen.”
Jordan walked toward the jury box. “Peter, are you the person who went to Sterling High School the morning of March 6, 2007, and shot and killed ten people?”
“Yes.”
“And wounded nineteen others?”
“Yes.”
“And caused damage to countless other people, and to a great deal of property?”
“I know,” Peter said.
“You’re not denying that today, are you?”
“No.”
“Can you tell the jury,” Jordan asked, “why you did it?”
Peter looked into his eyes. “They started it.”
“Who?”
“The bullies. The jocks. The ones who called me a freak my whole life.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“There are so many of them,” Peter said.
“Can you tell us why you felt you had to resort to violence?”
Jordan had told Peter that whatever he did, he could not get angry. That he had to stay calm and collected while he spoke, or his testimony would backfire on him—even more than Jordan already expected. “I tried to do what my mom wanted me to do,” Peter explained. “I tried to be like them, but that didn’t work out.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I tried out for soccer, but never got any time on the field. Once, I helped some kids play a practical joke on a teacher by moving his car from the parking lot into the gym. . . . I got detention, but the other kids didn’t, because they were on the basketball team and had a game on Saturday.”
“But, Peter,” Jordan said, “why this?”
Peter wet his lips. “It wasn’t supposed to end this way.”
“Did you plan to kill all those people?”
They had rehearsed this in the holding cell. All Peter had to say was what he’d said before, when Jordan had coached him. No. No I didn’t.
Peter looked down at his hands. “When I did it in the game,” he said quietly, “I won.”
Jordan froze. Peter had broken from the script, and now Jordan couldn’t find his line. He only knew t
hat the curtain was going to close before he finished. Scrambling, he replayed Peter’s response in his mind: it wasn’t all bad. It made him sound depressed, like a loner.
You can salvage this, Jordan thought to himself.
He walked up to Peter, trying desperately to communicate that he needed focus here; he needed Peter to play along with him. He needed to show the jury that this boy had chosen to stand before them in order to show remorse. “Do you understand now that there weren’t any winners that day, Peter?”
Jordan saw something shine in Peter’s eyes. A tiny flame, one that had been rekindled—optimism. Jordan had done his job too well: after five months of telling Peter that he could get him acquitted, that he had a strategy, that he knew what he was doing . . . Peter, goddammit, had picked this moment to finally believe him.
“The game’s not over yet, right?” Peter said, and he smiled hopefully at Jordan.
As two of the jurors turned away, Jordan fought for composure. He walked back to the defense table, cursing under his breath. This had always been Peter’s downfall, hadn’t it? He had no idea what he looked like or sounded like to the ordinary observer, the person who didn’t know that Peter wasn’t actively trying to sound like a homicidal killer, but instead trying to share a private joke with one of his only friends.
“Mr. McAfee,” the judge said. “Do you have any further questions?”
He had a thousand: How could you do this to me? How could you do this to yourself? How can I make this jury understand that you didn’t mean that the way it sounded? He shook his head, puzzling through his course of action, and the judge took that for an answer.
“Ms. Leven?” he said.
Jordan’s head snapped up. Wait, he wanted to say. Wait, I was still thinking. He held his breath. If Diana asked Peter anything—even what his middle name was—then he’d have a chance to redirect. And surely, then, he could leave the jury with a different impression of Peter.
Diana riffled through the notes she’d been taking, and then she turned them facedown on the table. “The state has no questions, Your Honor,” she said.
Judge Wagner summoned a bailiff. “Take Mr. Houghton back to his seat. We’ll adjourn court for the weekend.”
