Chapter 209: The Verdict 3

We pulled into the estate driveway at nine fifteen. The security lights triggered as Anderson parked, flooding the front steps in harsh white that made both of us squint.

Neither of us moved to get out.

The engine ticked as it cooled. The security lights timed out, and the driveway went dark again.

Anderson looked at the house through the windshield. He'd been here Tuesday night when he dopped me off after the first day of deliberations, and driven away. He'd never been inside. My father hadn't liked him. The Campbell estate had never opened its doors to Anderson Ellsworth.

"Do you want to come inside?" I asked tentatively.

He looked at me. Something careful in his expression, like he understood the weight of what I was offering and didn't want to treat it lightly.

"If you don't mind."

I unlocked the front door. The house was cold. I'd forgotten to adjust the thermostat before leaving yesterday morning, and the evening had dropped the temperature enough that the marble floors in the foyer felt like ice through my shoes.

Anderson stepped inside and stopped.

He looked up at the vaulted ceiling, at the staircase sweeping toward the second floor, at the antique side table my father had bought at auction in the nineties, at the framed photographs lining the wall above the console. My father and I at various ages. My mother, before she died. Family portraits from holidays and vacations and milestones that predated Anderson's existence in my life by decades.

This was not his space. He knew it. The house knew it. Everything about the foyer, the family photos, the architecture chosen by a man who'd never approved of his daughter's friend, announced that Anderson was a guest in a place where his name carried no history.

He stood the way people stand in museums. Looking but not touching.

"It's cold," he murmured.

"I'll turn up the heat."

I adjusted the thermostat and walked toward the kitchen. Anderson followed a few steps behind, his eyes moving over the hallway, taking in rooms he'd never seen. The formal dining room. The sitting room with my mother's piano still positioned near the bay window. The hallway lined with bookshelves my father had built himself one summer when I was nine, the shelves slightly uneven because he'd insisted on doing it without help.

In the kitchen, Anderson leaned against the doorframe and watched me open the refrigerator. He didn't sit. Didn't pull out a chair. He was waiting for permission that I hadn't thought to give because I'd forgotten how foreign this house was to him.

Takeout containers from earlier in the week. Bottled water. A carton of eggs. The pastries Bernard had brought to the courthouse days ago, rewrapped in foil, were going stale on the middle shelf.

I closed it.

"I'm going to order something," I said.

"Okay."

I pulled up the delivery app on my phone. Scrolled without seeing anything. Ordered some food because the interface remembered my last order, and making a decision felt like lifting something heavy.

Anderson was still in the doorframe.

"You're allowed to sit," I said.

He pulled out a chair at the kitchen island and sat. His hands rested on the counter, fingers spread flat, palms down. The way people brace themselves.

The house hummed as the heating kicked in. Pipes expanding in the walls. The old furnace rumbling somewhere beneath us.

I filled two glasses of water and set one in front of him. He drank half without speaking.

The kitchen clock read nine forty-two.

I sat across from him at the island. The marble was cold under my forearms.

We didn't talk.

This was different from the penthouse last night, where the silence had felt like pressure building behind a dam, where Anderson had poured three glasses of whiskey and stood at the window for hours because looking at the city was easier than looking at me. That silence had been full of things unsaid.

This silence was emptier. We'd said the things. In the courthouse hallway. In the parking garage. On the penthouse floor months ago when he'd cried and I'd told him I didn't know who I was without this fight. We'd covered the fear. The what-ifs. The future. We'd turned those conversations over so many times the edges had gone smooth.

There was nothing left to say that we hadn't already said.

So we sat in the kitchen and didn't say it.

The food arrived at ten fifteen. Anderson went to the door because I didn't move. He came back with bags and set them on the island. We opened containers. Pad Thai. Green curry. Spring rolls.

I ate three bites, set down the fork, and pushed the container away.

Anderson ate less than that.

We left the food on the island and moved to the living room. I turned on a single lamp, the one near the reading chair, and the room filled with low amber light.

Anderson stood near the entrance and looked around. The bookshelves lining the far wall. The fireplace mantel with more photographs. The furniture my father had chosen, solid and understated, built to last rather than impress.

"Sit," I said.

He took the armchair near the window. I sat on the couch and pulled off my shoes.

The house creaked.

Anderson's phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, looked at the screen, and turned it off. He set it face down on the side table and left it there.

I did the same.

No more news alerts. No more legal analysts speculating. No more notifications from a world that treated our lives like content.

The clock in the hallway ticked.

Anderson leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

He wasn't sleeping. His jaw was too tight. His hands gripped the armrests. But his eyes were closed, and the posture said he was done performing composure for the day. Done pretending he could manage what he was feeling by sitting up straight and choosing the right tie.

I watched him for a while.

He looked old tonight. Not aged, more like worn. Like something essential had been scraped away by four days of waiting, and there wasn't enough left to rebuild.

I looked away.

The wind picked up outside. Branches from the old oak scraped against a window upstairs.

I pulled my legs up onto the couch and wrapped my arms around my knees.

Eleven PM became midnight. Midnight became one AM.

Anderson opened his eyes at some point. I didn't notice when. He was looking at the bookshelves.

"Your father read a lot," he said. First words either of us had spoken in over two hours.

"Every night. Same chair you're sitting in."

He looked down at the armchair. Then back at me.

"He didn't sit here," I added. "He sat in his study. That chair was for guests."

Anderson nodded slightly. The distinction registered. Guest chair. Even in the reading room, my father had maintained boundaries about who belonged where.

Silence again.

I stood up. Not because I had somewhere to go. Because my body couldn't hold still anymore. I walked to the kitchen, poured water I didn't need, and stood at the sink looking out the window at the dark yard.

The security lights were off. The driveway was empty except for Anderson's car.

I set the water down untouched and went back to the living room.

Anderson hadn't moved.

"Guest room is upstairs," I said. "Top of the stairs, second door on the right. Clean sheets in the linen closet next to the bathroom if the bed isn't made."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he stood.

"Goodnight," he said.

"Goodnight."

I listened to his footsteps on the stairs. Slow, unfamiliar with which steps creaked and which ones didn't. I heard him pause on the landing, figuring out which way to turn. The wrong door opened first, then closed. The second door opened. The guest room.

The house went quiet.

I stood alone in the living room. The lamp hummed. The clock ticked.

Down the hall, the door to my father's study was closed.

I walked to it, turned the handle, and went inside.

I sat in it.

The leather was cold at first, then warmed.

I looked at the books on the shelf across from me. Business texts. Biographies. A few novels he'd loved and reread until the spines gave out.

I closed my eyes.

I didn't pray. I hadn't prayed in years. But I sat in my father's chair in the dark and asked for something I couldn't name.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling.

Sometime after two, I heard him come down the stairs. He moved through the hallway slowly.

I heard him stop.

"Elaine?"

His voice was low. He was standing somewhere in the dark hallway, not sure where I'd gone.

"In here," I called back.

There was a pause. Then footsteps. He appeared in the doorway. He looked at the room. At the desk, the shelves, the photographs. At me in the leather chair.

He didn't ask whose room it was. The photographs told him. My father at every age, in every frame, on every wall.

He didn't come in. instead he stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame, looking at a room that belonged to a man who'd never wanted him here.

"Couldn't sleep," he said.

"I know. I heard you."

He looked at the chair across from the desk. The smaller one. The visitor's chair.

I said nothing. Didn't invite him in this time. Let the decision be his.

He crossed the threshold. Sat in the visitor's chair, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked at the floor between his feet.

The study absorbed us.

The clock ticked through the walls.

Anderson's breathing slowed around three. His head tipped against the back of the chair. His hands went slack in his lap.

I watched him sleep in my father's study. In a room my father would never have allowed him to enter. In a chair meant for people who came to ask for things and left when the conversation ended.

He'd walked in without being invited. Sat down without being told. Fell asleep in a house that had never wanted him because the alternative was lying awake alone in a room he couldn't find his way back to in the dark.

I stayed in my father's chair. The leather had warmed to my body.

Tomorrow was day five.

The jury would reconvene at nine.

I watched the shadows shift across the ceiling as the night crawled toward dawn. The first pale light would come through the study window, the one facing east.

I'd be here when it came.