And the prosecutor, the man who had stood before television cameras and called Elena Cole a monster, simply stared, the last of the color leaving his face, as the foundation of the proudest conviction of his career dissolved in real time on a warden’s laptop.

There was no argument to be made against a man’s own face.

There was only the terrible, arriving understanding of what it meant.

For Sarah Jenkins, the moment carried a grief all its own, layered underneath the shock.

She had been Elena’s public defender, and like most public defenders she had carried more cases than any human being should, with fewer resources than any of them deserved, and she had done her best for Elena within the crushing limits of that system, and her best had not been enough.

She had watched her client be convicted.