Chapter Thirty-Four

 

After the jury filed out, the guard escorted Bryce back to the holding room. As had become their daily custom, Kendra followed and they spent a half-hour sitting across from each other at the small conference table, reviewing what had happened in the courtroom that day. “Don’t look so worried,” she said. “Everything is going to be okay. I’ve got a very good feeling about tomorrow.”

Despite his nervousness, Bryce pulled an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Kendra before he lost his nerve. “I wanted you to have this before the jury reaches its verdict.”

She reached out and took the envelope. “What is this, anyway?”

“It’s your payment. Not much, but the best I could do.” Bryce shifted his gaze to the wall as she opened and read the poem he wrote.

This Brightness

For Kendra

 

All night I stood waiting

for sun to fill the cell’s small window,

the glass still black where I pause

looking out as if for a signal

and remembering how dawn

releases the trees, mountains and each

fence from its shadow.

Still holding the nightfall between my hands

I whisper, “it will come.”

 

The dark yields slowly and this day

might have traveled here from the other side

of the earth, might have first lit the sky

over Europe, an avenue in Warsaw and a house

where a man has paced since midnight

the musty stillness of his attic, thinking

each time a board creaked that soldiers

moved on the stairs and imagining

that these would be his last moments.

 

Words like moths kicked up

from the tall grass could

trace his story back to its ink.

He knows the meaning of all time is words—

those small unstoppable sounds

that fold, finger by finger,

across our bodies.

 

He would understand morning

is a kind of reprieve, its slow coming

the affirmation of everything night

called into question, and he might believe

that light passes from country to country,

one man to another, a sharing

that becomes personal like the space

between the living and the dead—

that otherness inside us we never touch

no matter how far down our hands might reach.

 

Morning allows us to survive

our separate lives, step before windows

two continents apart, opening our hands

to the light of another country, this brightness

that comes to us from across the world.

For a moment, Kendra didn’t say anything. “God, Bryce. You’re really something.” Her voice was pillow soft. “I’ve never written a poem in my life. Where does it come from?”

Again, Bryce dodged Kendra’s gaze and stared at the wall. “It starts with something inside me, like a hunger to say or to understand someone or something. It is so fierce that it hurts, and then that ache, well…sometimes it finds a way out in a poem.”

She gave him a hug.

Something shifted. It was as if an internal mountain range had moved. He felt it in his toes. Kendra smelled like peaches. He held on a second too long.

She pulled away, her cheeks flushed. “I don’t know what to say. The truth is this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“It was a lot cheaper than a retainer.” Her compliments embarrassed him, along with the way her hug felt. There was no doubt about it, he had a slight crush on his attorney. Who wouldn’t? She was beautiful and smart. And, with any luck, she was about to save his life.

But who was he kidding? She was twenty-six years old and graduated from Harvard. He was thirty-five years old and on trial for murdering a child. He hadn’t completed his BA in night school. There would always be a sliver of uncrossable distance between him and Kendra.

“I’m going to frame it and hang it on my office wall.” Kendra carefully placed the poem in a manila folder in her briefcase. “You know, the way some people frame the first dollar they ever made.”

As the overhead light caught in her blue eyes, he imagined he could see into her, a clarity and openness that drew him. No one had ever done as much for him as she had. Kendra pulled him out of the darkness and showed him how to flip on a light bulb and save his own life.

“I want you to know something,” he said. “Whatever happens in the courtroom tomorrow, I’m grateful for everything you did for me. Even tracking down my family. You taught me something. Your family is never really in the past—you carry them around with you no matter where you are. Like those Russian dolls, their lives just sit inside you waiting to be acknowledged.”

“Radhauser did most of the work finding your family,” she said. “But you did a few things for me, too, Bryce. My father just handed me two season tickets to the Oregon Ducks home basketball games in the Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene. Center court, no less. And if it weren’t for you and your little lecture on forgiveness, I’d have told him where he could put them.” Kendra shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. Kendrick Huntington Palmer III snaps his fingers and season tickets magically appear. Do you like basketball, Bryce?”

It took all the strength he had to keep his hands from sweeping the wisps of blonde hair off her face. They kept brushing across her cheeks and he longed to touch them. “I love basketball,” he said. “But I’ve never seen a live Ducks game.”

Kendra smiled. “I’ll tell you what, when we beat this thing, one of those tickets is yours.”

“You don’t have to do that, Kendra.”

“And you didn’t have to write me a poem, either.” Kendra patted her briefcase. “Keeping a professional distance notwithstanding, I think we’ve adopted each other. Two social orphans become friends.”

Bryce smiled back.

It was their beginning.

* * *

On Tuesday morning, November twenty-third, 1999, just two days before Thanksgiving, Bryce struggled to keep his hands from shaking as Judge Shapiro called the courtroom to order. Both the prosecution and defense were scheduled to make their final arguments.

Kendra asked if she could approach the bench.

The judge nodded.

Kendra stepped up, Marshall at her heels. “Your Honor, I’d like to call one final witness to the stand. Henry Evans.”

“I object,” Marshall said. “This witness is not on the defense list.”

“Some new evidence has come to light. Henry was the one who delivered the bottle of apple juice to Skyler Sterling and one of the last people to see him that evening. His testimony is imperative to our case, Your Honor. I promise you, it will change everything.”

“I’m going to grant it, Ms. Palmer,” he said. “But it better be good.”

Marshall stomped away.

Kendra explained the witness’s special circumstances to the judge, then called Henry Evans to the stand.

Henry appeared terrified as he walked up to the aisle. He was dressed in a dark suit with pale blue shirt, and a gray and blue striped tie. Two times he turned around and his gaze found his father in the back of the courtroom. Henry kept snapping the rubber band against his left wrist.

Bear nodded to the boy, as if to encourage him.

When he was seated and sworn in, Kendra approached the stand. “Hello, Henry,” she said. “How are you today?”

“I’m scared. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.” Again, he snapped the rubber band.

“There is no wrong thing you can say, Henry. Only the truth. Do you know what the truth is?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “It is when you say what really happened and don’t make anything up, pretend, or lie.”

“Very good, Henry.”

He smiled.

“I want you to go back and remember when you went to Caleb Bryce’s house with Reggie Sterling and you asked Bryce if you could deliver the bottle of apple juice to Skyler. Do you remember that night?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you like Skyler Sterling?”

“Objection,” Marshall said. “Calls for an opinion.”

Judge Shapiro sighed. “You are right, Mr. Marshall, but these are special circumstances and I’ll allow. Answer the question, Henry.”

“I don’t remember the question.”

“Did you like Skyler Sterling?” Kendra repeated.

“Yes,” he said.

She needed to ask him something that couldn’t be answered with a yes or no. “Why did you like him?”

“He screamed a lot. And Reggie said he couldn’t live with him. But I liked him. He was a cute baby. And I liked to pretend he was the baby and I was the daddy.”

“You wear a rubber band on your wrist, don’t you, Henry?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it helps me not to scream out cuss words and make my dad and customers at the Lasso upset.”

“Do you have a condition known as Tourette’s Syndrome?”

He nodded. “I can’t always remember the name.”

“Did you go to see Dr. Durham?”

“Yes, he’s my doctor.”

“Did he tell you to wear the rubber band?”

“He said if I flick my wrist and it hurts a little, it might help me forget about screaming out bad words.”

“Did you put a red rubber band on Skyler Sterling’s wrist that night when you gave him the apple juice?”

“Yes. So he could stop screaming, too.”

“Why did you want him to stop screaming?”

“Because of Reggie and Dana. They’re my friends. I wanted them to be married again and Scott and Skyler could live with their mom and their dad.”

“Did you give Skyler anything else that night you thought might help him stop screaming so much?”

“Objection,” Marshall said. “Leading the witness.”

“Under the circumstances,” Judge Shapiro said. “I’m going to allow.”

Henry nodded.

“You need to say yes or no, Henry, so our court reporter can hear you.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Tell us about it, Henry.”

Bear stood up at the back of the courtroom. “Don’t say another word, son. I plead the fifth amendment on behalf of my son. He’s nineteen, but I’m his legal guardian.”

The judge slammed his hammer against the bench and ordered the bailiff to remove Bear from the courtroom.

Everything stopped while Bear was led out, screaming, “Stop talking, Henry. I mean it.”

“What else did you do to help Skyler?” Kendra continued.

“My dad said I shouldn’t talk.”

“You are in a court of law, Henry. And you have promised us and God that you’ll tell the truth, the whole truth. That is what you must do.”

“What about my dad?”

“He was wrong to tell you to be quiet. We need to hear what really happened that night and how you tried to help Skyler.”

“Will you explain to my dad?”

“Yes,” Kendra said. “I will. Now, what else did you do to help Skyler?”

“I gave him some of my medicine.”

“Do you know the name of your medicine?”

“No. It’s a hard word to say. But I take it every day. And it made me better.” He snapped the rubber band again. “I hardly ever scream now.”

“Is your medicine called Haloperidol?”

“Something like that, but shorter.”

“How about Haldol?”

“Yes. That’s my medicine.”

“How did you give Skyler your medicine, Henry?”

“I poured it into his bottle of apple juice, ‘cause I wanted him to stop screaming and get better like I did.”

“Thank you, Henry. I have no further questions.” Kendra took her seat next to Bryce.

When Radhauser leaned forward and squeezed Bryce’s shoulder, a streak of joy, as real as a lightning bolt, shot down Bryce’s back.

The courtroom grew so quiet, even Bryce could hear the silence. He had nearly given up, resigned himself to a conviction and death row in a Salem prison. His feelings about his future had been a muddle, like dirty water sloshing around in the bottom of a boat.

But now it was so clear. He wanted freedom with an almost fierce desire. He wanted to know Jason’s wife and kids. He wanted to get to know his mother again. Maybe even find Noah, his old friend from The Lake Institute.

But what about Henry? He leaned over and whispered to Kendra. “They can’t put Henry in jail. He won’t make it.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It won’t happen. No way will he serve any time. I’ll represent him myself if it comes to that.”

Marshall stood. “I have no questions of this witness, Your Honor.”

“The defense rests.” Kendra stood and moved closer to the judge.

Bryce stared at Kendra’s back for a moment, then turned to his sign reader.

“I move the murder charges against Caleb Bryce be dismissed,” Kendra said.

Judge Shapiro granted the motion, offering the state of Oregon’s sincere apology, but reminded the jury they still had to decide on the count of child abuse of Scott Sterling. And then he called for the closing arguments.

Marshall asked if he could approach the bench.

Both he and Kendra did.

“I prepared a closing for a murder charge,” he said. “I barely mention the child abuse.”

Judge Shapiro shook his head. “Well, you’ll just have to ad-lib, Mr. Marshall. I think our jury is ready to go home. Not to mention our defendant. We’ll hear your closing arguments after a fifteen-minute break.”