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KATHERINE WELSH FINISHES UP with Brooke Milligan by asking her about the last time she spoke with Morgan Carson.

“The day he killed her,” she says.

“Objection!”

“Sustained,” Judge Horton says. To Brooke he says, “It’s the jury’s job to acquit or convict, young lady. Not yours.”

“Sorry, Your Honor,” she says.

“Please try not to let it happen again,” Horton says.

“What I was trying to say was, it was the afternoon before the murders,” she says. “And it was pretty important.”

Welsh asks, “Important in what way?”

“She told me that she was going to tell him that she no longer wanted to see him, that she was breaking it off,” Brooke says.

“That her parents had just found out about their relationship, she didn’t exactly know how, and that her dad said that if Mr. Jacobson ever came near her again, he—Mr. Carson—would kill him. ”

“Did she say anything else during that call?”

“She did,” Brooke Milligan says.

“Please share with the jury what else she told you, if you would.”

“Morgan said that she was more scared about what Mr. Jacobson might do than she was her father.”

Katherine Welsh pauses, as if waiting for my objection.

But I let this go, because now it’s go time for me.

Whether I like it or not.

“May I call you Brooke?” is my opening line.

“Please do.”

“Well, then, good morning, Brooke.”

“Good morning,” she says, before sheepishly adding, “I guess.”

“Like Ms. Welsh said, you’re doing just fine, under what I’m sure couldn’t possibly be more difficult circumstances for you.”

“Thank you,” she says. “And you’re certainly right about that.”

“It sounds as if you and Morgan really were besties,” I say.

“We were.”

“Close enough that she confided what can be a high school girl’s biggest secret, about having finally done it, as we used to say when I was in high school back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Is that correct?”

“It is,” she says, nodding her head.

“So as far as you know, you were the only one who knew that she was indeed doing it, and with a much older man.”

“If any of our other friends knew, they never mentioned it, and that was the type of thing they all would have mentioned,” Brooke says.

“I’m just curious about something, since we’re talking about secrets here,” I continue. “Did you ever confide the same intimate details about yourself?”

“Ob jection !” Welsh says. “What Ms. Milligan may or may not have confided about her own life is irrelevant to these proceedings.”

“Sustained,” Horton says. “Let’s see if we can stay in our lane today, Ms. Smith.”

“Of course, Your Honor.”

I walk all the way over to the witness stand and lean an elbow on the partition, smiling at her as I do.

“Being told something like that in confidence,” I say, “I assume you didn’t share what Morgan was doing—and with whom—with any of your other girlfriends.”

“I would never.”

“Did any of them confide to you about losing their virginity?”

I wait for an objection, but none is forthcoming, at least not for now.

“No,” she says. “But I wasn’t as close with any of them as I was with Morgan.”

“So as far as you know, you were the only other person at Garden City High School who knew that Morgan Carson was having sex with Mr. Jacobson,” I say.

“You’d have to ask our other friends but, like I said before, none of them brought it up, and I believe that it was something that a high school girl would bring up if she knew.”

I nod.

“While Morgan’s relationship with my client was going on,” I say, “did you happen to have a boyfriend?”

“Objection.”

She sounds almost exhausted just saying it. Like she’s as tired as I am.

“Sustained,” Judge Horton says. “Are we going anywhere interesting with this, Ms. Smith?”

“I believe you’ll see when we get there.”

“Please get there quickly.”

“Have you yourself ever had a relationship with an older man, Brooke?” I ask.

“Objection!”

Horton puts up a hand. “I’ll allow it,” he says. “Speaks to both the victim’s state of mind, and the witness’s at the same time.”

Brooke Milligan is looking past me, to Katherine Welsh. But Welsh can’t help her right now because no one can.

Brooke turns to the judge. “Do I have to answer that?”

But Horton is looking at me. Occasionally there comes a moment when the person behind the bench has to trust the person in the arena, almost on faith.

I nod at him.

“Please answer the question,” Horton says to her.

She tries to buy herself some time. “Could you repeat the question, please?” she says to me.

“Certainly,” I say. “I just asked if you yourself had ever been involved with an older man, say the summer before school started that year.”

“Yes,” she says, her voice barely audible.

“While you were obviously the same age as Morgan?”

“Yes.”

This is hardly more than a whisper.

“I’m not sure everybody could hear you, Brooke.”

“Yes,” she says.

“And could you tell us if that man is in this courtroom?”

She looks down at the hands in her lap, then back up at me.

“Yes,” she says.

“Could you point him out for the jury, please.”

She waits as long as she possibly can, as if there is some way for her to run out the clock on this line of questioning, before she points directly at Rob Jacobson.