When I went to see my mother in the county jail, before the trials, the first words out of her mouth were not my wife’s name and were not my daughter’s.

They were: You have to help your brother, Julius.

Odile is already gone.

Putting Warrick in a cell won’t bring her back. I stood up out of the chair.

“You still think he’s the only one worth saving.” He is your blood, she wept.

And I said the truest thing I have ever said to my mother: “Odile was somebody’s daughter too.

She was my wife.

She was the mother of your grandchild.

She begged you for a doctor and you turned off her phone.

You do not lock a daughter in a room to protect the man who hurt her.” She sobbed — but the tears were fear for Warrick, not grief for Odile, and we both knew it, and I walked out.