I have thought about that moment a lot since it happened. The way the room sounded right before they read it. Like everyone in the gallery was trying not to exist for a second.
I had my hand over my mouth. I did not realize until after.
* * *
The jury came back on the third day.
My lawyer had told me three days was a good sign. Not a guarantee, but a good sign. A fast verdict usually meant the jury had agreed on something quickly, which could go either way. A longer deliberation usually meant they were working through something carefully, which in a case like mine, with the testimony on record, was more likely to land in my favor.
I sat at the defense table in the same suit and looked at the table in front of me and thought about nothing in particular. That is a skill I had developed. Turning the volume down on whatever is happening inside you when you need to be still on the outside.
The jury filed in. I watched their faces the way my lawyer had told me not to. She said juries are trained not to show anything and reading them will just make you crazy. She was probably right. I did it anyway.
The foreperson stood. Middle-aged woman, glasses, she had been taking notes through the whole trial. She held the paper and looked at the judge and read.
On the charge of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, we the jury find the defendant Jordan Bennett not guilty.
I heard my mom make a sound behind me.
On the charge of unlawful possession of a firearm, we the jury find the defendant Jordan Bennett not guilty.
On the charge of participation in organized criminal activity, we the jury find the defendant Jordan Bennett not guilty.
The room moved. I felt it more than I heard it. People behind me shifting, a sound that was not quite noise but was not quiet either. My lawyer put her hand on my arm.
The judge said something about the verdict being accepted and the defendant being released from all conditions of bail, and I heard the words but they were coming from somewhere far away.
I just sat there for a second.
Not guilty.
Three times.
* * *
My mom got to me first. She grabbed me before I had fully stood up and held on and I let her. Gia came around the rail and got her arms around both of us and the three of us just stood there in the middle of a courtroom while everything moved around us.
I could feel Gia shaking a little. Or maybe that was me.
Rue hung back. She always does. She lets the moment happen and then she comes in after. I looked at her over my mom's shoulder and she was standing a few feet away with her arms crossed and her eyes wet and she shook her head slowly like she was still processing it.
I reached out and grabbed her wrist and pulled her in.
She let me.
* * *
My lawyer shook my hand outside the courthouse. She looked like she had just finished a race.
"You did well in there," she said.
"You did well," I said. "I just answered questions."
She smiled. Told me to call her when the label meetings were back on. She wanted to be in the room.
I said I would.
She walked to her car and I stood on the courthouse steps with my family and looked out at the street. The Z was parked half a block up. I had driven it here this morning because I needed something familiar underneath me.
My mom was talking. Gia was talking. I was listening but I was also just standing there feeling the air.
I thought about Zen. About the jobs. About the burner at the bottom of the pier. About the Honda on the freeway and the door closing at that house and all the things that had happened that nobody in this courtroom would ever know about.
I thought about the label meetings still sitting in my calendar. Rescheduled. Two weeks out.
I thought about Maddy.
I had a lot of things to figure out. I knew that. Today was not the end of anything complicated. It was just the end of this particular thing.
But standing on those steps with my family around me and the sun out and nowhere I had to be, for the first time in a long time I felt like I could actually breathe.
I walked down the steps toward the Z.
"Where are we going?" Gia said.
I thought about it.
"Somewhere good," I said.
She smiled and followed me.