Lyndon looked at her. Then he looked at the blank blue screen. Then, for some reason, he looked at Izzy.
And Bobbie spoke. Not to the detective. Not to Lyndon. To me.
"It was only supposed to be a class," she said.
Her voice was very quiet and perfectly steady, the voice of someone reporting a fact.
"It was only supposed to be a class," she said again. "I didn't know what was in them. I didn't. I found them in Cade's room in September, in a sock in his lacrosse bag, the whole bag of them and the cartridges, and I didn't know what to do with them. I couldn't flush them. I thought somebody would find out. I couldn't call the police on my own grandson. I just hid them in my sewing box and I didn't know what to do. And then that boy nearly died, and Lyndon said someone had given Cade's name to the counselor, and that if it went to the sheriff, Cade would be charged as an adult because of his birthday, and with what happened to Colby they'd call it—" She stopped. "And I thought, a boy with no record. A boy from a good family. A first offense. They'd give him a class. Everybody gets a class. Jenna got a class, the first time. I thought nobody would really be hurt."
"Roberta," Lyndon said. "Stop talking."
She didn't look at him.
"I sat in a hospital waiting room for sixteen years," she said to me, "and I thought, I am not going to do it again. Not with Cade. Not again. I'd have done anything." Her eyes moved, finally, from my face to Izzy's. "I'd have done anything," she said, "and I did."
Izzy had been sitting perfectly still beside me through the whole clip, his hands folded on the table in front of him, his too-short tie lying flat on his white shirt. Now he unfolded his hands.
I knew what was going to happen before it happened. I saw his jaw set. I saw him take the breath he takes before a hard word, down low, into his belly, the way the speech therapist in Pittsburgh taught him when he was seven. I put my hand on his arm and he gently moved it off.
"Mrs. Tillotson," he said.
The T came clean. Then he hit the next word, and blocked, and the room waited. Mr. Lyall waited. Detective Okonjo waited, standing. Bobbie waited, with her crushed paper cup in her hand. Ten seconds. Fifteen. I've timed a lot of silences in my life, and that was the longest one I ever sat through, and I didn't fill it, and nobody else did either.