The third thing she saw were the faces of the jurors in the box to the right, all turned in her direction.
And finally, she saw her mother, seated at the table on the left. Her lawyer had turned around, but Ruby had not, which made her the only person in the room not currently looking at Joey. Her mother remained facing front, her long, glossy black hair smooth and shiny once again, the posture of her shoulders and back perfect.
Deborah held her hand as they proceeded down the aisle. Madeline Duffy smiled encouragingly at her from her seat at the table closer to the jury box. Ruby had still not turned around, but she did adjust her posture a little, sensing her daughter’s approach.
There were six men and six women on the jury. Some of them—women, mostly—made eye contact with Joey. One offered a smile. Duffy had told her earlier that morning that many of the jurors were parents, some with children close to Joey’s age.
As they were about to pass the defense table, her mother finally turned. Their gazes locked, and Ruby smiled. Her lawyer smiled, too, but Joey could only see one person.
She knew every line of her mother’s face; she knew what every millimeter of every facial expression meant. Joey had spent her entire existence trying to predict the weather of her mother’s emotions, always on high alert for a brewing storm and that split-second shift from clear skies to a Category 5 hurricane. Ruby had many smiles, but today, right now, this smile was sunshine.
Joey broke free from Deborah’s hand. Squeezing past the lawyer, she threw herself into her mother’s arms.
Ruby hugged her back just as tightly, her fingers stroking the back of Joey’s hair. “Remember what we talked about,” she murmured.
Neither of them let go until the bailiff came over to separate them.
Joey took a seat on the witness stand. Deborah sat two rows behind the crown attorney’s table, right by the aisle, so she and Joey could see each other clearly. She gave Joey a soft smile and a head tilt, as if to say, You got this.
Duffy began to ask her questions. They had been over this, they had practiced, and Joey knew exactly what to say. During prep she had found herself detaching whenever the questions got too hard and the memories were too much. Each time, Duffy would force her to come back. You have to stay present, Joelle. The jury needs to understand what you’ve been through, and to understand it, they need to feel it. And for them to feel it, you need to feel it. If just for this one time. I know you can do this, Joelle.
Joey answered questions about her upbringing, the various apartments they’d lived in, the bare cupboards, the closets she sometimes slept in when she didn’t feel safe in her bed. She told the jury about the physical abuse, her mother’s revolving door of boyfriends, the sounds of sex happening in the next room that she wasn’t supposed to hear. The jurors’ facial expressions changed constantly. One moment, they were sad for her. The next, they were angry at Ruby. And in between, there was pity. So much pity.
“I know this is hard, Joelle,” Duffy said. “And I want to reiterate how wonderfully you’re doing, and what a brave young lady you are. But now I want to talk about Charles Baxter. I want you to walk us through the night he was killed. Can you tell us what you saw?”
For this, Joey could not look at her mother. And she could not look at Deborah, either. Instead, she focused on Duffy’s face. She had no emotional connection to the crown attorney, who once again was just another person who said she wanted to help because she was being paid to do it. She would pretend that the jurors were just blank pages, waiting to be filled with the truth.
It didn’t necessarily have to be the truth. Just her truth.
Joey took a deep breath, and began.
* * *
A few days before Charles Baxter was killed, he had ended his affair with her mother for the fourth time in two years. Ruby was, to put it mildly, very upset.
“The asshole won’t answer his phone.” Her mother was on her third cigarette in twenty minutes as she paced around the living room. “He thinks he can just drop me? Oh no. No no no.”
Joey was curled into the corner of the sofa. She had seen this before. Her mother was like this after every breakup, bouncing from anger to self-pity and back again, like she was playing Ping-Pong with herself. This was the anger, and there was nothing to be done about it. The only thing Joey could do was listen and nod and agree. Anything else would only make things worse.
Ruby pressed the redial button on their cordless phone, which was, ironically, a gift from Charles. Joey could hear it ringing on the other end. After six rings, it went to voice mail. Again. She whipped the phone at the couch, where it missed Joey’s foot by a few inches.