Chapter Fifty-Two

Walt watched it all like a movie. His part was minimal. He sat next to his wife who seemed different than the wife he’d known days before. It was a soft change, something he’d prayed for, and watching it was an act of belief where disbelief threatened to rule his body. His son sat at his other side, an arrangement they often made in situations like these so he could lovingly distract Garrett and Marge could breathe. They had gotten there a few minutes early, so they lingered in one of the back rows, watching another child’s trial play out before them. It was a fact—this was a child, a small girl in a jumpsuit who couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Her hair looked unwashed but the defiance in her frame was threatening. Kids nowadays, Walt had often heard even from the likes of Gerry whose grandchildren seemed to be running a clinic up in Indianapolis. But Walt didn’t think kids or that much of anything had changed. Throughout history there would always be hardened hearts who felt defenseless. And often, they were the most vulnerable and needed love the most despite the way they bristled towards it.

What a cruel trick in a bag of cruel tricks.

The girl was a shoplifter. Walt wondered what road had led her there. Perhaps parents who didn’t care enough. But then he spotted a woman who was small and too thin in the arms of a man who looked like he had eaten the world away. They sobbed quietly, their frames undulating with the weight of their pain. The girl threw looks at them—isn’t this what you wanted?—when obviously it wasn’t what they had wanted at all. How many times had he sat patiently with Travis, telling him he was the sum of the five people he looked up to most. Considering that list seemed to include Marge, Garrett, and Franklin, and even Walt himself, he had never had to worry about the boy. Until the day he started to look up to Doulgas.

There, in the shadows of his father, Douglas moved his way into the room. Walt had only ever seen him in snippets, and mostly Walt kept his distance because Douglas was the fool Solomon had so often talked about. He was compelled by his own desires, and he had no understanding of his deceitful heart. But today, Douglas had the look of someone who understood a whole lot more than he had bargained for.

“What’s he doing here?” Marge’s whisper cut across her son to Walt who was wondering the same thing, the possibility of Douglas showing up now an unwanted reality. Behind Douglas came Edwin and then Franklin. They entered the opposite side of the courtroom, a few rows up from where Marge seethed and Walt unsettled.

“I don’t know.”