Three Days Before the Casket Was Delivered, My Son Asked Me to Sign a Document

I had shaken the man’s hand in the hallway that morning, and he’d looked at me the way people look at a car pulled over on the shoulder.

“Your Honor, my clients aren’t criminals,” Byers said.

“They’re the worn-out parents of a very sick little girl.”

I kept both hands folded on the rail and rubbed my thumb across the palm of my right hand, where the brass key had left four red half-moons that refused to fade.

“The child is at St.

Jude as we speak, in room 204.

She’s stable.