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Moscow, Idaho

E mily Alandt is already in town for graduation when she gets the email summons from Bill Thompson.

He’s convened a grand jury and she needs to testify.

No one can know.

She needs to get to the Latah County Courthouse on Sunday evening, when Thompson’s team will prepare her for what to expect at the real thing on Monday morning.

Hunter Johnson received the same summons.

The only people they tell are their moms, Karen and Jessica, who are with them for graduation.

Emily has an immediate problem: She has nothing to wear other than her graduation dress. So Jessica, Hunter’s mother, takes her to Target, where she purchases a respectable pair of pants. It’s hard, if not impossible, to relax through graduation events, knowing what lies ahead.

As she walks into the courthouse on Sunday evening, Emily glances at a big steel door to the jail. She shudders.

Kohberger is down there.

She tries to push him from her mind.

She and Hunter are separated for their practice sessions. Emily’s interlocutor is Ashley Jennings. Emily is nervous answering the questions. There are times when she screws up and starts over.

The next morning, she and Hunter find that it’s not as easy as they’d hoped to slip away from their friends, who are pregaming.

“We’ve got breakfast plans with our families,” they lie.

“Oh, so do a breakfast shot first!” is the reply.

That puts Emily on the spot. But nothing is going to induce her to drink.

Too much is at stake.

She and Hunter are driving, five minutes from the courthouse, when a member of Thompson’s team texts them an alert.

There’s media outside. Use the side door.

When Emily does find herself in front of a jury, she is grateful for the preparation. It’s intimidating. But she can do it. They ask the exact same questions she’s just rehearsed, and she answers them smoothly.

“Tell us about the events of November thirteenth.”

She and Hunter don’t know who else Thompson called for the grand jury, but Emily suspects that Dylan and Bethany may have testified on Zoom. She doesn’t see either girl around campus when she and Hunter return to their friends, then ultimately walk for graduation with their respective classes.

All she knows is that on May 17, it’s announced that Bryan Kohberger has been formally indicted by a grand jury for the murders of Xana, Ethan, Maddie, and Kaylee—which means there will be no preliminary hearing.

Emily has played her part.

“I’ll call you when I need you. But meanwhile I want you to get on with your lives.”

That was Bill Thompson’s parting message to Emily and Hunter when they headed back to Boise. But for Emily, returning to normality is a struggle.

After the murders, she struggles to focus. She worries that her GPA will not be good enough for her to get into a physical therapy program, so she ends up not applying. She’s lost sight of her goals. She feels adrift, no longer the person she was before the murders.

Hunter is an athletics coach at Centennial High School in Boise, so he, at least, has structure in his life.

Emily takes a series of part-time jobs, and eventually trains to be a dental hygienist. But she knows deep down that she needs to address the trauma of November 13. She needs to try to get past it.

She starts going to counseling and digging deep, learning to be alone, even though, thanks to Hunter, she seldom is.

Her doctor recommends she try Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR), but when she runs this past Thompson’s team, they warn her that this would likely disqualify any testimony she gives at trial because EMDR can affect memory.

Emily isn’t going to risk that, even though a trial could be many months away.

“I don’t want to testify, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” she says. She wants to see this through. She wants to get justice for Xana, Ethan, Kaylee, and Maddie.

Then—and only then—she will do the therapy.