But she curls it away from me. "Her blood." As I watch, she picks up the knife and slashes her wrist.

The knife falls out of Brit's hand, and as her eyes roll back in her head, I lift her in my arms and start running to my truck.

- IT'S A WHILE before Brit is stable again, and that's a generous term. We are at YaleNew Haven, a different hospital than the one where she delivered Davis. Her lacerations have been stitched, her wrist has been wrapped; the blood has been washed from her body. She has been admitted to the psych ward, and I have to say, I'm grateful. I can't unravel the knots in her mind.

I can barely unravel the knots in mine.

I tell Francis to go home, get some rest. Me, I'll stay overnight in the visitors' lounge, just to make sure if Brit wakes up and needs me, she will know someone is here for her. But right now, she is unconscious, knocked out with sedatives.

A hospital after midnight is ghostly. Lights are low, and sounds are eerie-the squeak of a nurse's shoes, the moan of a patient, the beep and exhale of a blood pressure machine. I buy a knit cap from the gift store, one that has been knit for chemo patients, but I don't care. It covers my tattoo and right now I want to blend in.

I sit in the cafeteria, nursing a cup of coffee, and combing through the tangle of my thoughts. There's only so many things you can hate. There are only so many people you can beat up, so many nights you can get drunk, so many times you can blame other people for your own bullshit. It's a drug, and like any drug, it stops working. And then what?

My head actually aches from holding three incompatible truths in it: 1. Black people are inferior. 2. Brit is half black. 3. I love Brit with all my heart.

Shouldn't numbers one and two make number three impossible? Or is she the exception to the rule? Was Adele one, too?

I think of me and Twinkie dreaming of the food we craved behind bars.

How many exceptions do there have to be before you start to realize that maybe the truths you've been told aren't actually true?

When I finish my coffee, I wander the halls of the hospital. I read a discarded newspaper in the lobby. I watch the flashing ambulance lights through the glass doors of the ER.

I stumble upon the preemie NICU by accident. Believe me, I don't want to be anywhere near a birthing pavilion; those scars are still tender for me, even if this is a different hospital. But I stand at the window beside another man. "She's mine," he says, pointing to a painfully small infant in a pink blanket. "Her name is Cora."

I panic a little; what creep hangs out in front of a nursery if he's not related to one of the babies? So I point to a kid in a blue blanket. There's a bit of a glare through his incubator, but even from here I can see the brown of his skin. "Davis," I lie.

My son was as white as I am, at least on the outside. He did not look like this newborn. But even if he had, now I realize I would have loved him. The truth is, if that baby were Davis, it wouldn't matter that his skin is darker than mine.

It would just matter that he is alive.

I bury my shaking hands in my coat, thinking of Francis, and of Brit. Maybe however much you've loved someone, that's how much you can hate. It's like a pocket turned inside out.

It stands to reason that the opposite should be true, too.

IN THE TIME THAT IT takes for the jury to return a verdict, I sit through forty more arraignments, thirty-eight of which are black men. Micah performs six surgeries. Violet goes to a birthday party. I read an article on the front page of the paper, about a march at Yale by students of color, who want-among other things-to rechristen a residential college currently named for John C. Calhoun, a U.S. vice president who supported slavery and secession.

For two days, Ruth and I sit at the courthouse, and wait. Edison goes back to school, knuckling down with renewed enthusiasm-it's amazing what a little brush with the law can do for a kid who's flirting with delinquency. Ruth also has-with my blessing, and with me at her side-appeared on Wallace Mercy's television show, via remote camera. He championed her bravery, and handed her a check to cover some of the money she had lost from being out of work for months-donations from people as close as East End and as far as Johannesburg. Afterward, we read notes that were enclosed with some of the contributions: I THINK ABOUT YOU AND YOUR BOY.

I DON'T HAVE MUCH, BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU'RE NOT ALONE.

THANK YOU FOR BEING BRAVE ENOUGH TO STAND UP, WHEN I DIDN'T.

We've heard about Brittany Bauer, who is suffering from what the prosecution calls stress and Ruth calls just plain crazy. No one has seen hide nor hair of Turk Bauer or Francis Mitchum.

"How did you know?" Ruth had asked me, immediately after the debacle that occurred when Wallace brought Adele Adams to the courthouse to "accidentally" cross paths with Francis and his daughter.

"I had a hunch," I told her. "I was looking through the neonatal screening, and I saw something none of us noticed before, because we were so focused on the MCADD: sickle-cell anemia. I remembered what the neonatologist said, about how that particular disease hits the African American community harder than others. And I also remembered Brit saying during her deposition that she never knew her mother."

"That's quite a long shot," Ruth had said.

"Yeah, that's why I did a little digging. One in twelve African Americans carry the sickle-cell trait. One in ten thousand white people carry it. Suddenly, it looked less like a wild card. So I called Wallace. The rest, that's on him. He found out the name of the mother from Brit's birth certificate, and tracked her down."

Ruth had looked at me. "But it had nothing to do with your case, really."

"Nope," I'd admitted. "That one, it was a gift from you to me. I figured there wasn't anything that could put a finer point on the hypocrisy of it all."

Now, as we come to the close of the second day with no word from the jury, we're all going a little stir-crazy. "What are you doing?" I ask Howard, who has been keeping the vigil with us. He's been typing furiously into his phone. "Hot date?"

"I've been looking up the sentencing difference for possession of crack versus cocaine," he says. "Up until 2010, a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute fifty grams or more of crack got a minimum of ten years in prison. To get the same sentence for cocaine, you had to distribute five thousand grams. Even now, the sentencing disparity ratio's eighteen to one."

I shake my head. "Why do you need to know this?"

"I'm thinking about appeal," he says brightly. "That's clearly a precedent for prejudice in sentencing, since eighty-four percent of people convicted for crack offenses are black, and black drug offenders are twenty percent more likely to be imprisoned than white drug offenders."

"Howard," I say, rubbing my temples. "Turn off your damn phone."

"This is bad, right?" Ruth says. She rubs her arms, although the radiator is belching and it's broiling in the room. "If they were going to acquit, it would have been quick, I bet."

"No news is good news," I lie.

- AT THE END of the day, the judge calls the jury back into the courtroom. "Have you arrived at a verdict?"

The forewoman stands. "No, Your Honor. We're split."

I know the judge is going to give them an Allen charge, a glorified legal pep talk. He turns to the jury, imperial, to imbue them with resolve. "You know, the State has spent a great deal of money to put this trial on, and nobody knows the facts more than you all do. Talk to each other. Allow yourself to hear another's point of view. I encourage you to arrive at a verdict, so that we do not have to go through this all over again."

The jury is dismissed, and I look at Ruth. "You probably have to get back home."

She looks at her watch. "I have a little time," she admits.

So we walk downtown, shoulder to shoulder, huddled against the cold to grab a cup of coffee. We slip out of the biting wind into the buzzy chatter of a local shop. "After I realized I couldn't cut it as a pastry chef I used to dream about opening a coffee place," I muse. "I wanted to call it Grounds for Dismissal."

We are the next to order; I ask Ruth how she takes her coffee. "Black," she says, and suddenly we are both laughing so hard that the barista looks at us as if we are crazy, as if we are speaking a language she can't understand.

Which, I guess, is not all that far from the truth.

- THE NEXT MORNING, Judge Thunder summons Odette and me to chambers. "I got a note from the foreman. We have a hung jury. Eleven to one." He shakes his head. "I'm very sorry, ladies."

After he dismisses us, I find Howard pacing outside chambers. "Well?"

"Mistrial. They're deadlocked, eleven to one."

"Who's the holdout?" Howard asks, but it's a rhetorical question; he knows I don't have that information.

Suddenly, though, we both stop walking and face each other. "Juror number twelve," we say simultaneously.

"Ten bucks?" Howard asks.

"You're on," I tell him.

"I knew we should have used a peremptory strike on her."

"You haven't won that bet yet," I point out. But deep down, I imagine he's right. The teacher who couldn't admit to having any implicit racism would have been mightily offended by my closing argument.

Ruth is waiting for me in the conference room. She looks up, hopeful. "They can't reach a verdict," I say.

"So now what?"

"That depends," I explain. "The case can be tried again, later, with a new jury. Or else Odette just gives up and doesn't pursue this any further."

"Do you think she-?"

"I learned a long time ago not to pretend I can think like a prosecutor," I admit. "We're just going to have to see."

In the courtroom, the jury files in, looking exhausted. "Madam Foreman," the judge says. "I understand that the jury has been unable to reach a verdict. Is that correct?"

The foreman stands. "Yes, Your Honor."

"Do you feel that further time would enable you to resolve this case finally between the State and Ms. Jefferson?"

"Unfortunately, Your Honor, some of us just cannot see eye to eye."

"Thank you for your service," Judge Thunder says. "I am dismissing this jury."

The men and women exit. In the gallery, there are hushed whispers, as people try to understand what this means. I try to figure out in my head the odds that Odette will go back to a grand jury for that involuntary manslaughter charge.

"There is still one final thing that needs to be done in this trial," Judge Thunder continues. "I am prepared to rule on the defense's renewed motion for judgment of acquittal."

Howard looks at me over Ruth's head. What?

Holy shit. Judge Thunder is going to use the escape hatch I gave him as a matter of routine. I hold my breath.

"I have researched the law, and have reviewed the evidence in this case very carefully. There is no credible proof that the death of this child was causally related to any action or inaction of the defendant's." He faces Ruth. "I am very sorry you had to go through what you did at your workplace, ma'am." He smacks his gavel. "I grant the defense's motion."

In this humbling moment I learn that not only can I not think like a prosecutor, I am woefully off-base about the mental machinations of a judge. I turn, a dazed laugh bubbling up inside me. Ruth's brow is furrowed. "I don't understand."

He hasn't declared a mistrial. He's granted a bona fide acquittal.

"Ruth," I say, grinning. "You are free to go."

FREEDOM IS THE FRAGILE NECK of a daffodil, after the longest of winters. It's the sound of your voice, without anyone drowning you out. It's having the grace to say yes, and more important, the right to say no. At the heart of freedom, hope beats: a pulse of possibility.

I am the same woman I was five minutes ago. I'm rooted to the same chair. My hands are flattened on the same scarred table. My lawyers are both still flanking me. That fluorescent light overhead is still spitting like a cockroach. Nothing has changed, and everything is different.

In a daze, I walk out of the courtroom. A bumper crop of microphones blooms in front of me. Kennedy instructs everyone that although her client is obviously delighted with the verdict, we will not be making any statements until we give an official press conference tomorrow.

That right now, her client has to get home to her son.

There are a few stragglers, hoping for a sound bite, but eventually they drift away. There is a professor being arraigned down the hall for possession of child pornography.

The world turns, and there's another victim, another bully. It's the arc of someone else's story now.

I text Edison, who calls me even though he has to leave class to do it, and I listen to the relief braided through his words. I call Adisa at work, and have to hold the phone away from my ear as she screams with joy. I'm interrupted by a text from Christina: a full row of smiling emojis, and then a hamburger and a glass of wine and a question mark.

Rain check? I type back.

"Ruth," Kennedy says, when she finds me standing with my phone in my hand, staring into space. "You all right?"

"I don't know," I reply, completely honest. "It's really over?"

Howard smiles. "It is really, truly, unequivocally over."

"Thank you," I say. I embrace him, and then I face Kennedy. "And you..." I shake my head. "I don't even know what to say."

"Think on it," Kennedy says, hugging me. "You can tell me next week when we have lunch."

I pull back, meeting her eyes. "I'd like that," I say, and something shifts between us. It's power, I realize, and we are dead even.

Suddenly I realize that in my astonishment at the verdict, I left my mother's lucky scarf in the courtroom. "I forgot something. I'll meet you downstairs."

When I reach the double doors, there's a bailiff stationed outside. "Ma'am?"

"I'm sorry-there was a scarf...? Can I..."

"Sure." He waves me inside.

I'm alone in the courtroom. I walk down the aisle of the gallery, past the bar, to the spot where I was sitting. My mother's scarf is curled underneath the desk. I pick it up, feed it like a seam through my hands.

I look around the empty chamber. One day, Edison might be arguing a case here, instead of sitting next to a lawyer like I have been. One day he might even be on the judge's bench.

I close my eyes, so that I can keep this minute with me. I listen to the silence.

It feels like light-years since I was brought into another courtroom down the hall for my arraignment, wearing shackles and a nightgown and not allowed to speak for myself. It feels like forever since I was told what I could not do.

"Yes," I say softly, because it is the opposite of restraint. Because it breaks chains. Because I can.

I ball my hands into fists and tilt back my head and let the word rip from my throat. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.

-NELSON MANDELA, LONG WALK TO FREEDOM.

IN THE EXAMINATION ROOM AT the clinic, I take a rubber glove out of the dispenser and blow it up, tying off the bottom. I take a pen and draw eyes, a beak. "Daddy," my daughter says. "You made me a chicken."