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both of her bosses recovered. She hadn’t needed to hear the gossip to know what the legal community was whispering about her. There was talk of finding a replacement. But she rallied, worked under her bosses’ supervision, and then, in front of national television syndicates and politicians everywhere, she made the case her own. When she won, she wasn’t lauded like some winning hometown quarterback; she was hailed as the whole team.
    We, the jury . . . 
    On the night of the verdict her colleagues joked about carrying her through the streets on their shoulders. And though they didn’tlift her, the suggestion was enough to make her high. She pictured it: streamers and confetti fluttering earthward as they paraded through the concrete caverns of downtown Albany—the scene no less real because it was imagined. They rolled into the bar, the usual bar, as if they owned every napkin, coaster, and glass. At some point Lauren lost track of the number of drinks thrust into her hand.
    Burt Sternfeld, who was a partner in a private firm of lawyers and jury consultants, gripped her arm.
A prodigy
, he’d called her. She was a
prodigy
. She’d heard the word before—when she’d graduated early from her private high school, when she got an accelerated BS, when she had her JD at twenty-two. But it wasn’t until Burt said
prodigy
to her that she thought,
Maybe.
He’d put an arm around her shoulders as if she—and not her father—had been golfing with him for a decade, and he said he’d heard a rumor about her interest in jury consulting. He asked her to make an appointment with his secretary. She nodded politely. Her toes in her shoes curled so hard they hurt.
    All of Albany had turned its eyes on her. The bartender gave her his number—an odd but delightful occurrence given that she’d seen the man at least a dozen times before and he’d never flirted with her until that night. And Juliette Peterson, the secretary who always gave her such a hard time when Lauren asked for copies, swallowed her usual irritability and said congratulations.
Everyone
knew Lauren was not just another wannabe. She was the real thing.
     . . . 
find the defendant . . . 
    Lauren’s victory was one for the history books, a victory that almost hadn’t happened. She’d stood trial in her own way, and she’d won. After the verdict had been announced, Senator Raimez had found her in a quiet corner of the courthouse. His eyes were full of tears and he held her hand somberly—not quite a handshake but an embracing.
    “Nothing changes the fact that my wife is dead,” he’d said to her, right in front of the cameras. “But justice lives on.”
     . . . 
guilty as charged . . . 
    That night in her bed, her head swimming with alcohol and compliments, her legs exhausted because she was not yet used to working a full day in high heels, she saw flashes of the future before her. Her proud parents (she would buy a house to rival theirs). The wardrobe she would have when she got her new job at Burt’s firm (which was just about in the bag). The respect she would command when she walked the marble corridors across the country. She fell asleep half dreaming that a great road was becoming clear before her—a path that she herself had cleared even though it stretched far out in front of her, into places she hadn’t yet been.
    If she thought of Arlen Fieldstone again—as a
person
rather than an
event
—it was only in passing. The Fieldstone conviction was washed away on a tide of vodka, congratulations, and then the rush of wildly successful years.
    From his little apartment—which he’d come to think of as a prison tower—Arlen had studied the mechanics of the antiques trade. It seemed simple enough. Will lugged armfuls of junk into the shop; strangers lugged them right back out. Rusty tricycles, advertisements for gasoline, plastic superheroes still in their boxes . . . The place was an ant farm for pack rats. Yesterday, Will had