It had simply added a fresh, witnessed assault charge to the top of a case that had been complete and waiting for months.

But it was not Leon I was watching, really.

It was my father’s face on the screen.

I had recorded that video myself, holding the camera as steady as I could while he gathered the strength to speak, and I had not watched it since — I had sealed it in the safe and left it there, because watching it was more than I could do.

Now I had no choice but to watch it, in a room full of people, and the thing that undid me was not the content of what he said but simply his face: alive, and looking at me, or seeming to, through the lens.

He had been so diminished by then, so light in the bed, and yet on that recording he had summoned something — some last reserve of the sharp, patient, formidable man he had been before the illness — and spent it, deliberately, on this.