I want to write about the woman on the other side of the aisle.

Her name is Coral Pike. She is sixty-nine years old and she is Derek’s mother, and she was in that courtroom every single day, in the second row on the left, in a beige cardigan.

I watched her the whole first day. I had already decided what she was.

On the third day, during the lunch recess, we were in the same corridor. There is a corridor at that courthouse with four benches and one vending machine, and there is no way to avoid a person in it.

She said, “You’re the woman who had the baby.”

I said, “Yes.”