The First Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

and loyal friend. Well, I don’t believe in blaming the victim,”Jake Hart said, and Mattie chuckled, knowing he was about to do just that. “I think that Constance Fisher
was
a dedicated mother and loyal friend.”
    But? Mattie waited.
    “But I also know she was a frustrated and bitter woman who verbally abused her son almost every day of his life, and often resorted to physical violence as well.” Jake paused, let the weight of his words sink in. “Now, I’m not trying to tell you that Douglas Bryant was an easy kid to mother. He wasn’t. He was many of the things that the prosecution claims, and those of us who have children,” he said, subtly aligning himself with the jurors, “understand just how frustrated his mother must have been, trying to deal with this kid who wouldn’t listen, who blamed her for his father walking out when he was a small boy, who was instrumental in the failure of her second marriage to Gene Fisher, who refused to show her the love and respect she felt she deserved. But stop for a minute,” Jake said, doing just that as the courtroom held its breath, waiting for him to continue.
    How often had he rehearsed that moment? Mattie wondered, aware she was holding her breath, just like everyone else. How many seconds had he programmed that pause to last?
    “Stop and consider the source of all that anger,” Jake continued after five full seconds had elapsed, instantly sucking his audience back in. “Little boys aren’t born bad. No little boy starts out hating his mother.”
    Mattie brought her hand to her mouth. So this was why he’d taken this case, she realized. And why he would win.
    It was personal.
    A lawyer’s practice is almost always a reflection of his own personality, he’d once told her. By extension, did that make the courtroom the legal equivalent of the psychiatrist’s couch?
    Mattie listened carefully as her husband recounted the horrors of the almost daily abuse Douglas Bryant had suffered at the hands of his mother—the washing his mouth out with soap when he was a child, the constant bad-mouthing, calling him stupid and worthless, the frequent beatings that resulted in oft-documented bruises and occasional broken bones—which resulted in Douglas Bryant’s lashing out uncontrollably when he could no longer cope with the abuse, a textbook case of “child abuse syndrome,” Jake intoned solemnly, referring to the earlier testimony of several expert psychiatrists.
    Was that what it was like for you? Mattie asked her husband silently, doubting she would ever receive a satisfactory answer. When they’d first started dating, Jake had made several veiled references to his troubled childhood, something Mattie related to instantly, being the survivor of a difficult childhood herself. But the more they’d dated, the less Jake confided, and whenever she pressed him for details, he’d clam right up, disappear into a funk for days at a time, until she learned not to ask any questions about his family. We have so much in common, she thought now, as she’d thought often during the many strained silences of their years together—the crazy mothers, the absent fathers, the lack of any real familial warmth.
    Instead of siblings, Mattie had shared her childhoodwith her mother’s many dogs, never less than six, sometimes as many as eleven, all doted upon and adored, so much easier to love than a troublesome child who looked just like the father who’d abandoned them. And while Jake hadn’t been an only child—he’d had an older brother who died in a boating accident, and a younger brother who had disappeared into a drug-filled haze several years before she came along—Mattie knew her husband’s adolescence had been as lonely and pain-filled as her own.
    No—worse. Much worse.
    Why wouldn’t you ever talk to me about it? she wondered now, inadvertently raising her hand as if wanting to ask the question out loud. The motion caught her husband’s eye, distracting him from