Tobias Prescott entered his guilty plea at nine-fifteen on Monday morning.
I was not in the courtroom.
I was in the garden.
The climbing rose had been planted along the south wall, its bare canes tied to the trellis I had erected the previous afternoon with the cheerful incompetence of someone who had never built a trellis before and had refused to ask for help on the grounds that some things needed to be done by the person who meant them. It was structurally adequate. It would do.
Vivian had texted me the courthouse update at nine-seventeen: Plea entered. Chen accepted. Sentencing hearing in six weeks. Tobias Prescott will spend the next eight to twelve years as a guest of the federal system. Nora, being dead, has escaped all earthly consequences, which I find unsatisfying but accept
