Her survival was itself the verdict, delivered before the judge said a word.

The brass urn sat on the evidence table as Exhibit A — the object that had held sand and drywall and had killed her mother — and every time Sidonie’s eyes passed over it her voice stayed level, and the jury watched a woman look at the symbol of her own supposed death and refuse, still, to be diminished by it.

Some of them were crying by the end.

She was not.

She had done her crying in the dark, for six years, and she was finished.

What was left was testimony, and it was enough.