I wanted the judge to see it if she looked.

Kristen sat at the petitioner’s table in cream silk and pearls, looking like grief in a magazine.

Her lawyer was a smooth man with a leather portfolio.

Trevor sat beside her, thinner than I remembered, his eyes fixed on the table.

The deputy had been told to wait outside until the hearing ended, because Howard had asked the judge for an unusual courtesy: let the old woman speak first.

Judge Alvarez, a gray-haired woman with a no-nonsense mouth, looked at me over her glasses.