The courtroom tastes like stale coffee and copier heat. I sit close enough to the aisle that I can feel the draft each time a new row of prospective jurors shuffles in, jackets whispering, perfume and detergent blooming in little weather fronts. The fluorescent lights hum at a frequency I wish I could mute. I press a palm to the smooth edge of the table—cool wood, friendly and firm—and watch Tamsin center herself like a metronome.
Julian takes his seat across the well with the poise of a man who knows cameras find him even when none are visible. His cufflinks are tiny rooks, brushed steel catching the overheads. The rook is a brand; the rook is a threat; the rook is also a toy, and I repeat that to myself until its shine dulls.
The judge reminds us: voir dire is not theater. “We are here to find fairness,” she says, voice even. “Not to preview arguments.” Her eyebrow moves a hair in my direction—receipts only—and then the clerk calls the first panel.
A woman in a cardigan the color of classroom chalk sits in the front row, hands folded over a spiral notebook battered by years of attendance sheets. Tamsin’s tone turns conversational steel. “Occupation?”
“Public-school teacher,” the woman says. She glances at me, then at the judge. “High school civics.”
“Any experiences that would make you lean for or against either party?” Tamsin asks.
The teacher squares her shoulders. “Choice is not hypothetical,” she says. “I grade kids who work night shifts and kids who raise siblings. Policy is personal where I sit. I can listen to evidence and not to slogans.”
The sentence lands with the neat weight of a stapled packet. My throat opens. I jot a dot on my legal pad that means keep her, a small constellation star.
Julian’s attorney, a man with a tie so pale it scans as absence, smiles without warmth. “Ma’am, do you donate to any causes that might influence you here?”
“I buy pencils,” she says. A couple of jurors snort; the judge taps her pen once and the room behaves. “I can weigh documents.”
Tamsin meets my eye—one blink that translates to document-minded—and then pivots down the row. The next man says he runs logistics at a warehouse. “Forklift ballet and compliance checklists,” he says. “I like when the boxes match the manifest.” I want him to folded-sleeve the entire case.
—micro-hook—
The air shifts when a glossy donor in a lapel pin sits. I know the pin from a museum annex where toasts get live-captioned for the curated crowd. He leans back in the chair like it paid for the wood. Julian’s counsel leads him in.
“You’ve supported the Rook Foundation?” the lawyer asks, gentle as a valet.
“I’ve supported the future,” the donor says. “Also the annex. Big wing.” He lets a laugh crack wide. “Is this about womb politics?”
The laugh hits my skin like static. I feel the lake in my blood drop a notch, dam-scheduled and indifferent. Tamsin doesn’t smile. “Sir,” she says, “could you follow a judge’s instruction to ignore press, ignore personality, and decide based only on authenticated records?”
He looks at Julian like testimony might be a selfie. “Depends how boring the records are,” he says, and he laughs again, louder.
“Thank you,” the judge says, dry as toast. “Counsel, sidebar.”
The white-noise machine purrs while they whisper. The donor stays smiling like a man who thinks rooms grin back. When the white noise clicks off, the judge speaks without raising her voice. “Excused. Thank you for your time.”
He looks surprised, then offended, then rehearsed neutral. He leaves a cologne wake of cedar and money that makes my sinuses pinch. I make a second dot on my pad—remove spectacle. The rook on Julian’s wrist flashes as he adjusts his cuff, a micro-move that reads to me as control lost, try again.
—micro-hook—
We cycle through biases like a controlled burn. A retiree talks about church but says he reads every bill before he votes. A woman with a stroller-age kid at home admits the HOA listserv polices her sidewalk like it’s a gated conscience. “I can read a ledger,” she adds. “I pay them dues; they itemize.” Tamsin doesn’t react, but her pen stops tapping. The man beside her says his sister used WIC after a layoff in ’23 and the defense’s move is immediate and simple: strike.
“For cause?” the judge asks.
“Peremptory,” the pale tie answers, lightness like a veil.
It becomes a pattern I can feel in my teeth. A juror mentions using WIC, or SNAP, or knowing someone who did, and defense burns a strike like sage they think will cleanse the room. They do not aim at bias; they aim at class. Tamsin notes the cadence, a tally rising discreetly in the margin of her legal pad. I see the subtraction math tightening, the number of strikes finite, the shape of the panel emerging under the erasures.
Tamsin asks her question the way a surgeon asks for a clamp. “Anyone believe that contracts should dictate intimate medical decisions?”
A few heads tilt; no hands rise. She nods, satisfied without gloat. “Anyone believe that courts should ignore documents to reward charisma?”
A man in a blazer with elbow patches half lifts a hand, then laughs at himself. “I teach statistics,” he says. “Charisma doesn’t survive small samples. I would like to see the data.”
“You’ll see data,” Tamsin says, tone neutral, promise limited to nouns.
My phone, face down in my bag, buzzes three times—the HOA listserv’s relentless drum: Child-neutral amenities update; stroller policy enforcement begins Monday. I press my knee against the bag, like pressure could muffle a world that wants everything tidy and no toddlers. I think of Mara’s rent receipt with the rook watermark, of the trust clause cut like a trapdoor. I breathe through my mask of calm and let the smell of toner and worn carpet anchor me.
—micro-hook—
The judge breaks for ten. In the hallway, the air smells like hand sanitizer and vending machine salt. Through a window at the end of the corridor I can see the glacial lake’s pale bathtub ring, the waterline notch I’ve been tracking through months of dam schedules. It’s noon; they must have restricted flow. The level looks steady, a mercy.
Tamsin sips black coffee and hands me a peppermint. “How’s your pulse?”
“Loud,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “You’re alive. We’re looking for people who think in receipts. Our teacher stays. Our stats guy stays. Warehouse compliance stays if defense doesn’t get cute.”
“They’re striking WIC like it’s a scarlet letter,” I say.
“They’re broadcasting,” she says. “Helps us frame the story: power versus proof.” She checks her watch, its band worn smooth. “Breathe. Panel two will be heavier on corporate.”
Julian walks past, voice low, hand at his mouth, counsel hunched in a murmured ellipsis. He glances at me and then past me, gaze shiny as a showroom. The rook at his cuff winks. I blow the peppermint cool across my tongue and remind myself of the red envelope waiting, predicate printed in my bones.
Back in the courtroom, the clerk seats panel two. A woman from a security firm says she audits access logs for a living. “Badges don’t lie,” she says. I feel a tiny click inside—one more lock turning toward daylight.
The pale tie tries to charm the room. “Who here believes philanthropy always helps?”
Three hands drift up, cautious. Tamsin rises with a gentle question that puts a weight on each wrist. “And who here has seen philanthropy used to purchase silence?”
The hands stay, then pause, then two lower themselves, the third hovers like it wants instructions. The statistician clears his throat from the gallery seats, eyes curious. The judge watches without commentary, a cat with all the knitting needles.
We lose a nurse who worries she can’t listen without wanting to fix everyone, including me. I want her in the box and out of the box at the same time. We keep a bookkeeper who speaks fluent ledger and distrusts adjectives. We keep a mechanic who loves torque specs and hates vague noises.
Defense burns another strike on a woman who once paid for groceries with WIC during bed rest. Tamsin stands, expression flat. “Pattern,” she says. “Your Honor, I’m noting a pattern.”
The judge’s eyebrow rises a millimeter. “Noted,” she says. “Counsel, reserve your lectures for closing. Continue.”
The pale tie nods, chastened by micrometers. He retreats to safer ground: “Can you treat Mr. Rook like any other citizen?”
I look at Julian. He sits like a museum statue staged to look candid. The rook gleams. The air changes around him, a subtle rearrangement of people wanting to be near light. I remember the donor’s sharp laugh, the live-captioned toasts, the smell of cedar closets full of performance. I keep my face a clean glass.
—micro-hook—
By late afternoon, the board in the clerk’s hands shows a grid of numbers that add up to us. Twelve jurors, two alternates. I inventory them not by faces but by verbs: weigh, read, audit, tally, fix, teach. The teacher anchors the left side. The stat professor holds a middle seat like a plumb line. The warehouse man sits with a posture that says manifest first. The bookkeeper has a notebook already open, pen aligned to the margin. The security auditor’s gaze sweeps the room in quiet loops.
The judge speaks, unhurried. “You will decide this case on evidence admitted, not on anything outside this courtroom,” she says. “Not on news, not on rhetoric, not on sympathy.” She looks at me, then at Julian. “This is a receipts case.”
The clerk raises the Bible-never-required hand alternative. Hands rise. My throat tightens and releases at the word sworn. The silence after the oath has weight. It presses my shoulders down into the chair, not like burden but like ballast.
Tamsin slides me a sticky note under the table where only I can see it. Practical. Document-minded. Her handwriting is small and square, never fussy. She taps the red envelope inside her brief with one fingernail—one clear click—then leaves it alone. We only open it if the predicate lands. I lay my palm flat on the wood again and feel the courtroom’s temperature through the grain.
Julian glances at the jury with the ease of a man who’s been applauded for walking into rooms. He doesn’t see the teacher’s steady jaw or the bookkeeper’s lined-up pen or the mechanic’s hands folded like tools at rest. He sees an audience. I see a weighing machine.
The judge nods to the clerk. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are now the jury,” she says. “Court will reconvene at nine for opening statements.” Her eyebrow shifts to the exact angle I now read as warning and benediction. “Receipts only.”
People stand. Wood creaks. The fluorescent hum swells and then settles, a ceiling of bees. I gather my notes and the peppermint wrapper and tuck them into my bag. The HOA app pings again on my screen—child-neutral amenity survey—and I swipe it away with a small, private smile that tastes like defiance.
Outside, the late light hits the lake like a blade. The waterline is steady today, a quiet truce. I breathe in cool air that smells faintly of rain on metal and the faint cedar that clings to my scarf from the closets back at the Glass House. I’m nervous, yes, but the nervousness has edges now. I can stack it next to our exhibits and it fits.
I end with a question I hold at the back of my tongue like a coin I will not spend until the lights go up: When the first words hit tomorrow, will these twelve weigh our paper over his polish—or will we need that sealed red envelope to remind the room what truth looks like under oath?