It arrives in stages.

First the confusion — a judge is not supposed to recognize the defendant’s mother, a bookkeeper is not supposed to have a case named after her.

Then the recalculation, visible behind the eyes, as the person hurries to work out how much the ground has shifted and how much of their plan still stands.

And then, if they are capable of it, the dawning of real understanding: that the shift is not a setback but a reversal, that the floor they were standing on was never a floor, that the person they came to destroy has been three moves ahead the entire time.

Sheldon was not quick enough to reach that last stage in the courtroom; he would only get there later, in a cell, with time to think.

But he reached the first two stages right there at the table, and I watched my son’s face pass through them, and I felt the old professional recognition and the new maternal grief arrive together, as they would keep arriving, hand in hand, for the rest of that terrible, necessary morning.