His thumb nails dug in opposite directions two irregular grooves into the yellow sides. The pencil began to bend, ready to splinter in half, but as if he knew its exact tolerance, he stopped, let go of one end of it and starting tapping the eraser in a sharp staccato. It was quiet. Courtrooms, even one as packed as this one with cynical reporters and thrill seeking spectators, usually were; but never as quiet as when someone was on trial for murder and the likely punishment was death. A trial at this level, murder, a capital case, brought with it a sense of solemnity, a reminder of finality, the feeling you might expect to have if, somehow, you could watch someone’s funeral in advance. I had not thought about it before, but now it came to me all at once, the way all these strangers, men and women who had never met her, would glance at Danielle, sitting next to me, and then immediately look away. It was not what Franklin had done, look way because he was afraid what his look might show; it was not that at all.
