(Cole)
I heard the door to the public gallery open behind me.
I didn't turn around but I felt the shift in the room the way you did when someone entered a space with a particular kind of presence. Lena sat down beside me a moment later and I glanced at her briefly.
She was composed. Steady. The same way she had been all morning.
I looked back at the front of the courtroom.
Behind us the gallery settled into quiet and we waited.
The twenty minutes passed the way waiting always did when something significant was on the other side of it. Slowly and then all at once.
Judge Ames walked back in.
We stood.
She sat.
She opened the folder in front of her and looked at it for a long moment before she looked up at the room.
"Before I deliver my ruling," she said. "There is one outstanding
