He had committed his crimes in front of the one person on earth least equipped to miss them, and he had done it because he could not imagine that his mother was still, underneath the gray hair and the cane and the grief, exactly who she had always been.

Chapter 4 — I Didn’t Come Unprepared

Judge Bennett glanced at the empty chair beside me, the chair where an attorney would normally sit.

“Mrs.

Parker, am I to understand you are representing yourself today?”

“For this hearing, yes,” I said.

And I saw the faintest flicker of a relieved smile cross Gregory Walsh’s face, the smile of an opposing lawyer who believes his job just became easier, who sees an old woman without counsel and imagines an easy afternoon.

I noticed that smile.