He stared down at the table he and his lawyer were sitting behind. It started to spin and tip like the deck of a boat in a windstorm. Dylan grabbed one edge to keep from smashing his face against the tossing wood surface. With his other hand he took hold of the seat of his chair lest he be pitched onto the floor.

“I tried to kill my brother with Daddy’s axe,” he whispered. This time Mrs. Eisenhart’s kick hurt. He guessed he hadn’t spoken loud enough for anyone else to hear because nobody was looking at him. The words hadn’t been a confession; he’d said them to see if it would make him remember. Because he didn’t. He didn’t remember a thing. Not one thing after his mother had put him to bed.

He’d told them that over and over, but even his own lawyer didn’t believe him. When she got to talk, she argued that people suffering head injuries from accidents often couldn’t remember events that happened immediately before the trauma, that the blow had given Dylan a severe concussion, that he’d been in intensive care, and that, since the incident, he suffered severe headaches.

Nobody felt sorry for him; Dylan didn’t even feel sorry for himself. He’d tried to kill his brother.

Rich was on the stand for over an hour. Talking so long cost him. Lines of pain aged his face. During the whole thing, even when the prosecutor pushed, Rich refused to say anything bad about Dylan. Looking straight at the jury the way Mrs. Eisenhart told Dylan he should if she decided to put him on the stand, Rich told them that Dylan never hurt anybody, didn’t hit or pinch or call other kids names, minded his mother and father, was kind and protective of Lena, their thirty-month-old sister, and brought home injured animals to take care of. The more good he told them, the less the jury believed it. It didn’t even sound like Rich believed it himself.