September 22, Tuesday
JUROR NUMBER eight Xavier Boone is a thirty-five-year-old warehouse supervisor.
He rarely speaks, which was exactly why I'd started noticing when he did.
In a box full of people who filled silence in different ways, Xavier held everything close, and the moments he chose to break that reserve carried a weight the more chatty jurors never quite managed.
I was taking mental notes on Xavier.
Today's witness was a records custodian working through a thick chain of custody log, testimony so procedural that even Priya's pen had slowed to occasional notes rather than her usual steady scrawl.
I kept my needles moving on autopilot, the sage green yarn sliding easily now that the pattern lived in my hands rather than my head, and found my attention drifting sideways to Xavier.
He sat with his arms loosely folded, perfectly still, but his eyes tracked the witness with the focused patience of someone accustomed to watching for the exact moment a story starts to wobble—the look, I imagined, of a man who'd caught plenty of employees stretching the truth about a missed shipment.
At the afternoon break, I ended up beside him near the vending machine, both of us waiting out the same stalled line.
"Long one today," I offered, safe, neutral territory.
"Feels like all of them lately." He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Had a supervised call with my fiancée last night.
She's trying to lock down the wedding venue and I'm approving centerpiece colors over a monitored phone with a marshal standing close enough to hear the whole thing.
" He shook his head, somewhere between amused and worn down.
"Spring's coming up fast. I run forty people at the warehouse without blinking and I can't pick a linen swatch from in here. "
"I'm sure she understands."
"Yeah. But it's costing her, me being here."
The line moved, and he stepped up to the machine, then paused and glanced back at me. "You've got kids, right? Teenagers?"
"Two. Fourteen and sixteen. Currently very unhappy with me."
That earned a short laugh, real and unguarded. "I think we're both losing points with somebody back home."
I laughed too, surprised by how good it felt—not the joke itself, but the small, ordinary solidarity of it, two people quietly acknowledging that whatever waited for us on the other side of the trial would need tending when we finally got there.
Walking back to the box a few minutes later, I found myself hoping this thin thread between us would hold.
Xavier struck me as someone who noticed everything and said little, the kind of steady presence I suspected the panel would eventually lean on.
I didn't know yet what that would mean once the testimony ended and the real work began, but I liked the idea of having him somewhere nearby when it did.