Olivia doesn't answer for a second. She watches Bryce: small, blue-mouthed, alive. And she remembers briefly her older brother at fifteen, accused of something he didn't do in a courtroom where nobody had looked at him like he was a son, either.
"He is a good kid, Mrs. Bennett. He is. We're going to be okay."
Tanisha breathes out, long, slow—the kind of exhale she has been holding since the phone first rang on Wednesday.
A few feet away, Bryce sets his half-eaten cone on the wall and watches a sparrow hopping between sugar wrappers. He whispers to himself, almost a prayer, almost a song: "Ellie's still here. Ellie's still here. Ellie's still here."
He doesn't know yet that across town in a glass tower, the Whitfield legal team has just received its instructions for Monday morning. He is nine. He gets to be nine for one more afternoon.
The sparrow flies.
Monday morning, ninth floor of the Charlotte Courthouse Annex. Garrett Holloway walks into the conference room like a man who has never lost a Monday in his life: 6'3", three-piece suit, a briefcase that costs more than Tanisha's car. He is the lead litigator for Whitfield Industries, and he is the kind of corporate attorney who eats public defenders for breakfast and sends the bones back to billing. He sets a folder on the table. Olivia Spencer is on the other side, alone.
"Miss Spencer, I'll be brief."
"Please."
He slides the folder across: a revised charge sheet. The brooch has been reappraised by a Whitfield-retained jeweler; new value: $96,000. The charges have been upgraded: receiving stolen property is now joined by conspiracy to defraud. A new name has appeared as a cooperating witness: Trevor Sullivan.
Olivia reads the page twice. "You're charging a nine-year-old with conspiracy."