September 21, Monday
I HADN'T planned on the seat next to juror number seven Carol Winslow becoming mine by default, but somewhere over the past month it had, the two of us settling into adjacent chairs in the box each morning as naturally as if assigned seating existed.
Today I knitted and she took notes while a compliance officer on the witness stand stammered his way through testimony about corporate filings, glancing at his own attorney before every answer.
Carol didn't say anything about him. She didn't have to.
I caught the small, private twitch at the corner of her mouth, the barely perceptible narrowing of her eyes that told me everything her mouth wasn't allowed to.
Thirty-one years of third grade, she'd told me once, teaches you to spot a rehearsed answer from across a room.
I'd started to understand what she meant just from watching her face during testimony—not a word spoken, but a whole education happening in her expression.
At the noon recess we ended up at the same corner table in the jury room. She leaned over to inspect the sage green blanket taking shape in my lap.
"That's coming along beautifully," she said. "Who's it for?"
"To donate to a children's hospital."
"That's lovely of you. My granddaughter in Charlotte was a preemie and was in the hospital for several weeks after she was born. My daughter brought her home wrapped in a knitted blanket someone had made and donated. It was very special."
I smiled, grateful for the easy conversation, nothing that required careful footwork around the rules Judge Arnold had drilled into all of us.
"Do you miss teaching?" I asked.
"Every day. Not the paperwork, mind you, but the children. There's nothing quite like watching a seven-year-old figure out how to read a whole sentence for the first time. Their whole face changes. I retired eleven years ago and I still dream about my classroom sometimes."
"Are you sleeping well here?"
"Oh, yes. When you've buried a sick husband and raised three children largely on your own, six months in a hotel with room service starts to look less like a hardship and more like a vacation.
" She said it lightly, but I caught the truth underneath it—a woman who'd absorbed harder things than sequestration and come out the other side able to laugh about it.
I thought about Elaine's visit, about Warren, about Heidi presumably unpacking boxes in my old bedroom closet at this very moment, and felt a small, unexpected pang of envy for the peace Carol had found on the other side of her losses.
"You'll get there too, dear," she said, as if she'd read some of it off my face. She was remembering me telling the judge I'd gone through a recent divorce and had two teenage children at home.
I wanted to believe her… but I was positive she was stronger than me. And a small, sick part of me wanted to say she was lucky her husband had died instead of divorcing her. The shock of the utterly inappropriate thought stilled my knitting needles. Shame washed over me.
The bailiff appeared to announce recess was over. I stood and walked back toward the courtroom a little unsteadily, stunned at the vehemence of my emotions toward Warren.
Was it possible I wasn't over him?