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Chris asked me if I wanted him to stay with me Tuesday night, but I lied and said I would be fine. I had always thought that once Antoine Marshall was executed, I would experience a sense of closure and be ready to move on to the next phase of my life. But on the way back from Jackson, I realized how much this struggle had defined me. Now that he was dead, now that the fight was over, I felt like a big part of me had died as well. What made it worse was the convoluted way it had all ended. Antoine Marshall had stepped up and done the right thing, taking responsibility for his actions. But I had dodged my responsibility to the justice system, finding ways to keep harmful information secret—an approach that had sealed Antoine Marshall’s fate.

It was over so abruptly. And the image of Antoine Marshall strapped to the gurney, eyes closed and the IVs in both arms, was seared into my memory. That night I took the Lunexor that Gillespie had prescribed but didn’t experience the same type of high I had experienced before. It did help me sleep, but the next day I couldn’t force myself out of bed before eleven. I just wanted to stay in a fetal position under the blankets until the pain went away, until my mother and father came back and the ache in my heart disappeared.

For two days I stayed in my sleep clothes until the afternoon hours and seldom ventured outside my house. I had a session with Gillespie on Thursday night, and he tried to walk me through some relaxation techniques, but nothing worked. With the death of Antoine Marshall, and especially the circumstances surrounding his death, I had lost my zeal for being a prosecutor. Without that, I wasn’t even sure who Jamie Brock was anymore.

I spent most of Friday going through old scrapbooks and memorabilia that reminded me of my mom. When I was a teenager, I hadn’t been that interested in her work as a forensic psychiatrist. But now, as I read some of the newspaper clippings she and my dad had saved, I gained a new appreciation for what a powerful witness she must have been. She testified all over the country against defendants who claimed insanity through irresistible impulse. She had apparently developed a subspecialty in what it took for somebody to be brainwashed and was the psychiatrist of choice for many high-profile cases when prosecutors were debunking that defense.

Out of all the articles I read, it seemed that she lost only once. The defense lawyer was a young showboat from Las Vegas named Quinn Newberg.

But my mom testified for the defense side as well. On that side, she specialized in cases involving alleged sexual abuse when the victims claimed to recall the abuse under hypnosis. My mom was apparently a national leader in showing how persons who were susceptible to hypnosis were equally susceptible to the power of suggestion from the person who had hypnotized them. Oftentimes the counselor or psychiatrist would help the “victim” create a detailed account of sexual abuses that never actually occurred.

It was such a tragic waste that my mom had been cut down in the prime of her professional career, not to mention at a time when her daughter needed her most.

I called Chris a few times, and he seemed to be moving on better than me. But then again, he didn’t have to live with the secrets I did. I had decided that I would never tell him. I felt I was already paying a high price to protect my father’s reputation. There was no sense destroying Chris’s memories as well.

Late Friday afternoon, I finally got sick of feeling sorry for myself and called Bill Masterson. He asked how I was doing, and I told him I had been better. His solution didn’t surprise me.

“I think it’s time that you get back in the saddle. That’s what both your mom and your dad would have wanted.”

I agreed with him because I didn’t have the energy to tell him the truth—that I was wondering whether I even wanted to be a prosecutor anymore.

“We need to get the Caleb Tate case nol-prossed next week,” Masterson said. “And we need to get ready for the press onslaught when we do.”

I knew what that meant. I would be the one to face the reporters and tell them we didn’t have enough evidence to go to trial. Everybody knew how much I wanted to nail Caleb Tate. The fact that we were backing off, at least for the time being, would go down easier coming from me.

When I went to bed Friday night, the last image in my mind was the same one I had seen every other night before the medication kicked in—the face of Antoine Marshall, a man who was haunting me in death as much as he did in life.