The First Time Read Online Free PDF

his summation. Maybe I could have helped you, she offered silently, their eyes locking across the room. His handsome face registered surprise, confusion, anger, and fear, all in less than a fraction of a second, all invisible to everyone but her. I know you so well, she thought, feeling a strange tickle at the back of her throat. And yet, I don’t know you at all.
    Certainly you don’t know me.
    And then suddenly the tickle at the back of her throat exploded, and she was laughing out loud, laughing so loud that everyone was turning around to look at her, laughing so uncontrollably that the judge was banging with her gavel, just like they do on TV, Mattie thought, laughing louder still, watching a uniformed officer approach. She caught the look of abject horror on her husband’s face as she jumped to her feet and propelled herself out of the row, trailing her coat alongthe floor after her. Reaching the large marble-framed wooden door at the back of the courtroom, Mattie turned back, her eyes briefly connecting with the horrified eyes of the woman with curly red hair from the row in front of hers. I always wanted curls like that, Mattie found herself thinking as the officer quickly ushered her out the door. If he said anything to her, she couldn’t hear it over her laughter, which continued unabated down seven flights of stairs and across the main lobby, down the outside steps, and onto the street.

T HREE
    O rder. Order in the court.”
    The judge was banging on her desk with her gavel, bouncing up and down in her high-backed leather chair, while the gallery before her buzzed nervously, like bees whose hive has been unexpectedly disturbed. Some of the spectators were whispering behind closed palms, others laughing openly. Several members of the jury talked animatedly among themselves. “What on earth …?” “What do you suppose …?” “What was that all about?”
    Jake Hart stood in the center of the old courtroom, with its high ceiling, large side windows, and dark paneling, halfway between his client and the jury, too stunned to move, his shock rooting him firmly to the worn brown carpet beneath his black shoes, his fury spinning an invisible, protective cocoon around him,the noise and confusion of the courtroom swooping, like newly wakened bats, around his head. He felt like a grenade whose string had been pulled. If he took one step, if he so much as breathed, he would explode. It was important that he stay very still. He had to refocus, regroup, reclaim lost ground.
    What the hell had happened?
    It had been going so well, everything proceeding exactly according to plan. He’d worked for weeks on his summation—not only on the words he spoke, but on the way in which he spoke them, his inflection, the stress he placed on certain syllables, favoring this one over that, the pacing of his sentences, when to pause, when to continue. He’d memorized the words, perfected the cadence. It was going to be the speech of his life, the closing argument that would pull everything together, cap the highest-profile case of his career, a case the firm’s senior partners had expressed serious reservations about his taking on, a case they’d argued was hopeless, that didn’t stand the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell. It was also the case that would almost certainly guarantee him a partnership should he win it, propel him to the top of his profession at the ripe old age of thirty-eight.
    And he’d done it. All his hard work had paid off. He’d had the jury in the palm of his hand, hanging on his every phrase.
Child abuse syndrome
—what the hell was that before he’d raised it as a defense? “The parallels with wife abuse syndrome are unmistakable and undeniable,” he’d been about to continue. “Indeed, the abused child is more vulnerable than the abused wife because the child has even less control over the situation,even less ability to choose his environment, to pack up his bags and get the hell out.” The