“ ‘Mama’?” Mr. Picton asked. “Clara, do you see your mama anywhere right now?” The girl nodded quickly. “Can you point to her, please?” Glancing up ever so briefly, Clara stole a look at Libby, and then bent her head back down as she pointed toward the defense table. “Let the record state,” Mr. Picton said, “that the witness recognizes the accused, Mrs. Elspeth Hunter, as being her mother, the former Mrs. Elspeth Hatch, more commonly known as Libby Hatch.” Mr. Picton drew closer to the witness box and softened his voice again. “All right, Clara. Tell me, did you want to leave the lake that night?”

The girl shook her head, being careful to keep her braid behind her. “No, sir-I wanted to see the rockets.”

“And your mama-did she want to see the rockets, too?”

“Yes. But she said we had to get Tommy and Matthew home.”

“Was she happy about that?”

“No, sir. She was kind of-mad. She got kind of mad, sometimes.”

“Did she say anything that let you know she was kind of mad?”

Clara nodded once again, though reluctantly. “She said what she wanted didn’t matter-didn’t ever matter. That she always had to take care of us instead of doing what she liked.”

“Did she tell you what she would’ve ‘liked,’ exactly?”

Clara shrugged-or at least, her one good shoulder did. “I figured she meant seeing the rockets.”

Letting the girl take a few breaths to steady herself, Mr. Picton waited before saying, “Now, then, Clara-you got into your wagon to go home?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did your mother do anything, being as she was so angry?”

Clara’s face went puzzled. “She didn’t spank us or anything, if that’s what you mean. She just told me to get the boys into the wagon, and then we left.”

“Told you?” Mr. Picton asked, moving over to the jury and plastering a look of surprise on his face. “She didn’t put the boys into the wagon?”

“She tried,” Clara answered. “But Matthew started to cry. So she just told me to do it, and went down to the water to wash her face.”

Mr. Picton looked at the jury what you might call meaningfully. “Did she often ask you to take care of the boys?”

Nodding, Clara looked down at her hands again. “Mm-hmm. It was my job.”

Mr. Picton nodded, still studying the jury, who were starting to look as wide-eyed and confused as Sheriff Dunning had when he’d come out of the grand jury hearing. “I see,” Mr. Picton said. “That was your job… and once the boys were in the wagon?”

“Then Mama came up from the water, and we started to drive home,” Clara answered; but the words weren’t as strong as they had been to that point.

Mr. Picton, hearing the change, came back over to her, and stood so that his body blocked Clara’s view of Libby, and vice versa. “But you didn’t get home, did you, Clara?”

Seeming relieved that her mother was out of sight, Clara shook her head with more certainty. “No, sir.”

“And why not?”

Another deep breath and another look at the Doctor, and Clara went on, “We drove back through town, and we were on the road home-”

“The Charlton road?” Mr. Picton asked.

Clara nodded. “All of a sudden Mama drove the wagon over under a big tree, off the road. It was dark by then, and I didn’t know why she stopped. It was scary, on that road.”

“And where were you sitting, at that time?”

“I was in the back, holding on to Tommy so’s he didn’t bother Matthew-he was asleep by then.”

“Matthew was?”

“Yes, sir. And I didn’t want Tommy to wake him up so’s he’d start crying about his stomach again. It bothered Mama. I asked her why we stopped. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just sat up on the bench, staring at the road. I asked her again, and then she got down and came around to the back of the wagon. She had her bag in her hand. She said she had something important she needed to tell us.”

Hearing Clara’s voice start to trail off again, Mr. Picton said, “It’s all right, Clara. What did she tell you?”

“She said that she’d stopped… she’d stopped…”

“Clara?”

The girl’s eyes’d gone glassy, and for a minute my heart sank, thinking that she’d shrunk back into the horrified silence what’d gripped her for so long. I saw the Doctor’s jaw set hard, and I knew that he was worrying about the same thing. We both started breathing again, though, when Clara near-whispered:

“She said that she’d seen our dada.”

Judge Brown leaned over, cupping one of his big ears with his hand. “I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up a little, young lady, if you can,” he said.

Looking up at him and swallowing hard, Clara repeated, “She said that she’d seen our dada. She said he told her he was with God. She said that he told her God wanted us to be with Him, too.”

Mr. Picton nodded grimly, glancing to the jury box. “For the jury’s information, Clara’s father, Daniel Hatch, passed away on December the twenty-ninth, 1893-approximately six months before the night in question. The cause was a sudden”-here Mr. Picton turned around to look at Libby-“a very sudden, and unexplained, attack of heart disease.”

“Your Honor,” Mr. Darrow said, standing up as quick as he could, “this kind of innuendo-”

“Mr. Picton,” the judge agreed, nodding to Mr. Darrow and then looking at the assistant district attorney, “I’ve warned you-”

“Your Honor, I suggest nothing,” Mr. Picton said, his eyes going wide and innocent. “The plain truth is that every medical man in Ballston Spa examined Daniel Hatch during his illness, and could find no explanation for his condition.”

“Then say that,” Judge Brown replied. “Half-truths are not better than lies, sir. Continue with your questions.”

Mr. Picton turned to Clara once more, letting his voice go soft again. “And what did you think that your mama meant, when she said that your dada told her that God wanted you to be with Him?”

Clara’s left shoulder shrugged again. “I didn’t know. I thought she meant that-that someday-but…”

Nodding, Mr. Picton said, “But that wasn’t what she meant, was it?”

Clara shook her head, this time hard enough to move the braid; and as the scar on the back of her neck became visible, I noted that one or two of the jurors caught sight of it, and silently pointed it out to the others. “She opened her bag,” Clara said. “And she took out dada’s gun.”

“Dada’s gun?” Mr. Picton asked. “How did you know it was your dada’s gun?”

“He kept it under his pillow,” Clara answered, “and he showed it to me once. He told me never to touch it, unless somebody bad was in the house. Somebody who was stealing, or… Mama left it there after he died.”

The girl’s voice trailed off, and her face began to get frightened: frightened in a way what even looking to the Doctor didn’t seem to help. Knowing that he’d reached a very dangerous point, Mr. Picton moved in closer to ask, “What happened then, Clara?”

“Mama, she-” Clara’s head began to shiver a little, and the left side of her body followed. Wrapping her good arm around herself, she worked hard to go on: “Mama came up into the wagon. She woke up Matthew and told me to give Tommy to him. So I did. Then she looked at me again. She told me it was time to go see Dada and God. That it would be a better place, and we had to do what God wanted.” Tears filled the girl’s eyes and started to roll down her face, but she never really cried as such, just grabbed herself tighter and tried to keep going. “She touched me with the gun-”

“Where did she touch you, Clara?” Mr. Picton asked. The girl pointed to her upper chest, finally letting out just one choking sob. “And then?”

“I remember she pulled the trigger, and there was a big bang-but that’s all,” Clara answered, getting a better hold of herself. “I don’t remember anything more. Not until I was in my bed at home.”

Mr. Picton nodded, letting out a deep breath of his own. “All right, Clara. It’s all right. We can talk about something else now, if you want.” Clara wiped her face with her hand and said, “Okay.” After giving her a couple of minutes, Mr. Picton asked, in a louder voice, “Clara-do you remember Reverend Parker?”