He did not miss much, Judge Bennett, and I had watched him long enough by then to see that Rachel’s little remark had landed somewhere in him and stuck.

“Then let’s discuss Mrs.

Parker’s injuries,” he said, and his voice had changed, cooled, sharpened into the voice of a man who has decided to look very closely at something.

Rachel had meant her comment to reinforce the picture of an unstable old woman injuring herself.

Instead she had opened the exact door I had come there to walk through.

Because I very much wanted to discuss my injuries.