I stumble down from the witness box because I have to get to Jeremy fast. He and Raymond are standing up at the defense table, and an officer is heading for Jer. I don’t know what the rules are here, but I need to talk to my brother.
“Jeremy?” I rush over to him before anybody can stop me, but the table is between us. I can’t touch him. I want to hug him, to feel his stiff arms fold around me, to have his chin on my head. “I’m sorry. I had to tell it that way.” I want to shout to Jer that I don’t believe he’s crazy, but I can’t. Raymond told me I can’t ever say that to anybody, especially not in court.
“You need to leave, Hope,” Raymond says. He’s tossing papers and files into his briefcase.
I ignore him. It’s Jeremy I want. “Jeremy, you have to tell them you didn’t do it. Write it out. Please? Just write down what happened.” He can write. Until this… until Coach died… Jeremy wrote notes all the time, in beautiful, pointy, swirling letters, his own brand of calligraphy.
Jeremy turns and gives me a sad, disappointed smile filled with forgiveness. Bile spouts from my belly to my throat, but I gulp it back down. His eyes widen as the officer slaps on handcuffs. His wrists are bruised, and his forearms have blue-and-yellow fingerprints. I’d be horrified if I didn’t know firsthand how easily my brother bruises. It was Rita’s curse when Jeremy was young because the world could see her temper spelled out on Jeremy’s skin in purple and blue. She made him wear sweatshirts and jeans, even in Oklahoma summers. Most of the bruises came from Jeremy’s clumsiness, though. I used to call them nature’s decorations.
“Wait!” I beg. “Please let me talk to him.”
I watch my brother’s hands, his long, knotted fingers twisting frantically in the cuffs.
“Settle down, son,” says the officer of the court, a burly man with tiny wire-rimmed glasses. Except for his soft eyes, he looks like the bald bouncer Rita fell for in Arizona, right after she quit her waitress job. “Come along now.”
Jeremy’s wrists spin faster and wilder. The metal cuffs clink together. He stares over his shoulder at me, intense, desperate.
“Take it easy, Jer,” I urge, angry at myself for making him worse, for upsetting him, for calling him crazy in front of God and everybody.
Then I get it. He’s not trying to wrestle out of the cuffs. He’s doing charades, mimicking the motion of turning a lid on a jar. Jeremy wants one of his jars. He collects empty jars, and he wants- needs -one now.
“I’ll try, Jeremy. I promise. And I’ll take good care of your jars. Okay?”
His hands stop twisting. His body goes limp.
The officer takes him by one arm. “There’s a good boy,” he says, leading him away. “Time to go.”
I stare after Jeremy for a solid minute after he disappears behind a side door. I don’t want to think what’s on the other side, where Jeremy will spend one more night.
I wheel on Raymond. “This is wrong, Raymond. He didn’t do it.”
Raymond doesn’t look up from his overstuffed briefcase. “Hope, we’ve been all through this. Your mother and I settled on a trial strategy.”
“But you pled not guilty by reason of insanity and not guilty?” I sat through as many of Raymond and Rita’s trial talks as they’d let me. I’d wanted them to come out and say Jeremy didn’t do it, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Rita is convinced Jeremy did it but didn’t mean to, so she was all about the insanity plea. Then Raymond told us that in Ohio, you can plead both things, “not guilty” and “not guilty by reason of insanity.” So that’s what we did. He said it was like covering your bases, like telling the jury: “My client didn’t do it, but if he did, he was insane and didn’t know what he was doing.”
Raymond sighs like he’s losing patience with me. “Yes. We pled NG and NGRI, not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. At the insanity hearing, Jeremy was deemed capable of standing trial and helping in his own defense. Hope, I thought you understood that.”
“I did! But if they’ve already said he’s not insane in that insanity hearing, why are you trying to make out like he’s crazy now?”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” Raymond explains. “That hearing was separate from this trial. The jury wasn’t there. Here, in this court, we can still go for not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“But what about proving he didn’t do it? Period! Why aren’t you doing that?” I’m shouting now, but I can’t help it.
Raymond glances around, then whispers, “Because there’s no evidence for that.”
That shuts me up. No evidence, except the evidence piling up against my brother. I haven’t been allowed in the courtroom before now because I had to testify, but I’ve read the newspaper articles about the state’s witnesses, who claim they saw Jeremy running from the barn with a bloody bat, his bloody bat.
I sense someone behind me before he speaks. “I’m sorry. You need to clear the courtroom.” Sheriff Matthew Wells has the gravelly voice of an old-time Wild West sheriff.
I turn to face him. He’s about Rita’s age, tall with a beer gut. The sleeves of his light brown shirt are rolled up to the elbow, showing a purple tattoo of a star, or maybe a badge. His black hair has a circular dent where his hat must belong when he’s not in court. There’s a gun in his holster. “Need to move along, folks.”
“Of course,” Raymond says. “Sorry, Sheriff.” He snaps his briefcase shut and looks over at me. “Hope, I’ll see you tonight, all right?”
I nod. But that sick feeling in my stomach comes back. Raymond wants to prepare me for tomorrow. More testimony, including the prosecutor’s cross-examination. How do you rehearse for that?
“Miss?” Sheriff Wells touches my arm, and I automatically pull away. “You really do need to leave now.”
I hear footsteps and wonder if he’s called in reinforcements. A posse? A SWAT team?
But it’s only T.J., coming to my rescue. “She was just trying to talk to her brother’s lawyer, Sheriff.” Thomas James Bowers is a couple of inches shorter than I am, about half the size of the sheriff. Everything else about T.J. is too long-his nose, his jaw, his hair, which flops over sturdy rectangular glasses. He swore he’d stick with me through this whole trial, and he has.
“She can talk to her brother’s lawyer outside the courtroom,” Sheriff Wells snaps.
Shouts flood the courtroom as the main doors open and Raymond exits. He’s swarmed by reporters. Before the doors close again, I see Raymond duck, like he’s dodging tomatoes.
“Let’s go, Hope,” T.J. says. “I got us a ride home.”
I nod, grateful. Rita dropped us off this morning, but she’s not coming back for us. I don’t feel much like walking seven blocks to the station to catch a bus back to Grain, especially since buses don’t leave that often.
Following T.J. to the big doors that swallowed up Raymond, I feel Sheriff Wells’s gaze on my back. It’s the same invisible shove Rita uses to make sure I do what she tells me to.
As soon as I step out into the hall, cameras click. I keep my head down and rush through the courthouse. Half a dozen reporters follow me, shouting questions: “Hope, why won’t your brother speak?” “Did you know he did it?” “What did he-?”
I try to block out their voices and focus on the clatter of our footsteps on the hard floors, the echo that reaches the high ceiling and bounces off marble walls. I make it to the front doors and am amazed how dark it is outside. And the temperature must have dropped twenty degrees. August should be dry-bones hot, and usually is around here, but the gray clouds and west winds are promising rain.
I stop on the top step of the courthouse and glance around for T.J. He must have gotten lost in the crowd of reporters. A couple of them close in on me. One has beautiful red hair, which she pushes behind her shoulders while signaling to the cameraman beside her. “Hope, Mo Pento, WTSN. Can you tell us if you think-?”
I push past her. My head feels like it’s floating off my shoulders. I think I might vomit. How’d you like that, WTSN?
A horn honks. A blue Stratus is parked at the foot of the steps. A window lowers, and Chase Wells peers out. Green eyes, sun-blond hair. He doesn’t look a thing like his dad. Everything about him screams East Coast, from his khaki pants to his navy polo shirt. Chase is not just cute; he’s beautiful.
I feel a hand on my back. “Sorry.” T.J. guides me down a step or two. “They had me trapped back there. You okay?”
“Where are we going, T.J.?” I shout because it’s too loud out here. Reporters are crowding in again. I smell sweat and perfume and cigarettes.
“There he is!” T.J. exclaims, pushing too hard from behind. I have to struggle to keep from falling down the steps.
“There who is?” I know he’s trying to help-he always tries to help. But I think I should have made a run for it on my own. I could have been at the bus station by now.
Chase’s car is still at the bottom of the steps. He honks his horn again and shoves the back door open. T.J. waves at him and keeps pushing toward the car.
I stop short on the bottom step. “Wait. Who did you-?”
“I-uh-I talked Chase into giving us a ride back to Grain.” He takes the last two steps down, but I don’t follow him. “Hope?”
I shake my head.
T.J. tosses a smile to Chase and whispers up to me, “You know Chase. He plays ball with me.” He lowers his voice. “His dad’s the sheriff?”
Do I know Chase Wells? I’ve watched him for two summers and thought about him in between.
“Hope?” That reporter with the hair sticks a microphone in my face. “Can you tell us why your brother-?”
I reach for T.J.’s hand. We make a dash for the car, dive into the backseat, and shut the door as Chase Wells takes off, tires squealing like they’re in pain.