And the answer is that some proud, exhausted thing in me refused, on principle, to audition for my own freedom by faking an emotion I did not feel.

I was not sad in the way they wanted; I was enraged, and stunned, and betrayed past the reach of tears, and I would not counterfeit grief to satisfy strangers who should have been weighing evidence instead of theater.

I thought, in my innocence about how the world actually works, that the facts would speak.

I did not yet understand that in a courtroom, facts are only ever half the trial, and the other half is performance, and that a beautiful woman with a hand on a flat stomach performing sorrow will beat a cold woman telling the truth nine times out of ten.

Larissa understood that.