Page 7 of After Anna

Caleb nodded. “Yes, by ac-ci-dent.”

“Accident!Way to go!” Maggie ruffled Caleb’s reddish-brown hair with long bangs.

“Great job, Caleb! Byaccident.” Noah grinned down at him. “Say it again. Was it byaccident?”

Maggie held her breath. Caleb was supposed to repeat the word three times, which was difficult for kids with apraxia. If he couldn’t, they were supposed to let it go. The pathologist didn’t want them turning every conversation into a drill. They needed to encourage Caleb to talk, not shut him down.

Caleb answered, “It was anac-di-dent.”

Noah smiled. “Try it again, buddy.Accident.”

Caleb pursed his lips, thinking again. “Acc-di-tent.”

Noah touched his shoulder. “Good enough for now, buddy.”

“It sure is,” Maggie added, but she could see that Caleb was disappointed. “Caleb you don’t have to learn that word. It’s not anemergency.”

“Ha!” Caleb smiled slyly at Maggie, knowing it was another of their target words. “No, stop! That’s too hard.”

“Caleb, it’s anemergency!” Noah grabbed Caleb and gave him a hug. “It’s an emergency! I need a hug!”

Maggie laughed. “Yes, an emergency hug!”

“Dad, no!” Caleb shoved Noah away playfully, and father and son started laughing and wrestling, falling onto the grass as Ralph sprang out of the way.

Maggie watched them with another surge of happiness, feeling lucky in them both. Caleb was more than she ever could have asked for, and she’d treated him as her own since the day she’d met him. She wondered if she’d ever get that close to Anna or if it was too late to make up for lost time.

Maggie felt the sunshine warm her shoulders. It was finally April, after a long Pennsylvania winter. Spring was a time of rebirth, and it was Easter, so it didn’t get any better. Maybe this was a new beginning, for her and Anna.

Starting Friday.

Chapter Five

Noah, After

TRIAL, DAY 6

Noah arranged his features into a mask at counsel table, shifting in the gray suit that Thomas had bought for him. Thomas was standing in front of the jury box, about to deliver his closing argument. The prosecution had just finished, and Noah knew that Thomas’s closing was his last chance.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Thomas began, his voice booming with a hint of a Philadelphia accent. “Thank you for your time and the attention. I won’t keep you longer than necessary. But a man is on trial for his life here, and though you have heard one side of the story, you need to hear the other. I hope you’ll keep an open mind because my client, Dr. Noah Alderman, has been wrongly accused of the murder of his stepdaughter, Anna Desroches.”

Noah cringed, hearing it said aloud. It still seemed so unreal to him, despite the fact that he had lived it. Yet he had only himself to blame.

“Let me remind you that Dr. Alderman is a prominent pediatric allergist in the suburbs. He graduated from Yale University, Tufts Medical School, and he took an oath to never harm anyone. He raised his only son Caleb on his own, after the death of his first wife from ovarian cancer.”

Noah hated that Thomas was playing the sympathy card. Karen had suffered so much. He shuddered to think of it now.

“Dr. Alderman is a person just like you and me, and I say this because you saw him on the witness stand. Some of you may have thought that he was not telling the truth, simply because of the way he acted. If you recall, he seemed to forget certain facts, he got confused, and he even appeared evasive at times.”

Noah tried not to cringe. He could see one or two of the jurors nodding in agreement.

“But here’s what I want you to remember when you go into the jury room and recall Dr. Alderman’s testimony. First, he did not have to testify at all. The United States Constitution guarantees that he is innocent until proven guilty, and the burden to prove him guilty always rests with the Commonwealth. You know from TV and the movies that very few defendants take the stand in their own defense. Dr. Alderman did that very thing, and that should tell you something about him and his integrity.”

Noah swallowed hard, watching the jurors. An older Asian man in the back, VFW Guy, nodded, but a chesty white woman in the front row, Victoria’s Secret, folded her arms. The Terminator, a steroidal pipe fitter, glanced at Noah with approval, which gave him some hope.

“Secondly, I would like you to ask yourself howyouwould have done under cross-examination by Linda Swain-Pettit, one of the most experienced prosecutors in the city, if not the country.” Thomas gestured at the prosecutor. “You’ve seen her in action, so you know that the woman is a heat-seeking missile. She talks fast and thinks faster. She’s been in the courtroom almost every day for the past twenty-two years of her life, which is remarkable considering she looks only thirty.”

Noah smiled at the unexpected joke, and even Linda chuckled, caught off-guard. The jury laughed, and Noah could feel them warming to Thomas’s argument.