Ezoic
Brian glanced up when we came in. He looked at me first. Cool. Blank. The way he’d looked at me for the last year.
Then he looked at my father.
His face changed.
It was small. Just for a second. But I saw it. His shoulders stiffened. His mouth went tight. He looked at my father the way you’d look at a dog you weren’t sure was friendly.
And then he quickly looked away.
He stared down at the table in front of him. He didn’t look up again.
Ezoic
I turned to Dad as we sat down behind Claire.
“Brian looked strange when he saw you.”
Dad was looking straight ahead at the empty judge’s bench.
“Nicole,” he said quietly. “Let Claire handle today.”
The judge came in. We all stood. We all sat.
Ezoic
Judge Alvarez was in her sixties, with short gray hair and glasses she wore low on her nose. She’d been our judge for the whole case. She had a way of looking at people over the top of those glasses that made them stop talking in the middle of their sentences.
