eighth.”
“I do remember that evening.”
Of course he does. Under ordinary circumstances, he wouldhave no memory whatsoever of a sleepless night. But when later that Sundaymorning, squad cars had pulled up all around his neighbor’s home, the memorystuck.
“I often have trouble sleeping,” he continues. “Or I shouldsay, my sleep patterns are very irregular. Since my wife died, I just don’tsleep like I used to. So, I had slept much of that Saturday evening and byeleven o’clock at night, I was wide awake.”
“What were you doing around that time?”
“I was painting. I do watercolors in my sunroom.” Mr.Rothman laughs, a throaty chuckle. “Not much of a sunroom in the middle ofFebruary.”
“Sure.” Roger Ogren smiles. “And where does that sunroomface, sir?”
“The room overlooks the road. Oh, I can see across thestreet to my neighbors. I can also see to the east, to Sam’s property. It’s abay window, y’see.”
“Sure. So you could see Mr. Dillon’s property.”
“Can see his driveway, his yard, bit of his house but notmuch.”
“Were you awake at the hour of one in the morning on Sunday,the eighth of February?”
“Yes.”
“And could you see outside?”
“Well, yes, I could. I’m a bit hard of hearing. I’m notblind.”
“Very good, sir. Can you describe for us what it looked likeoutside at that time of night?”
“Well, basically it was quiet. But, I’d say a little afterone, a truck comes driving down the road and parks outside Sam’s.”
“A truck. A little after one in the morning. Can youdescribe that truck?”
“One of those sport-utility jobs. The Lexus. The mini-SUV.It was silver.”
The SUV that Allison drives. She has a 2003 model, silver.Roger Ogren has a photograph of Allison’s Lexus and shows it to the witness.
“Yeah, it looked just like that,” he says. “It was silver.Didn’t get a look at the plates, of course.” He shakes his head. “It was movingpretty fast down the street, all right. Couldn’t really see exactly whathappened when it stopped. I just know that it parked by Sam’s house. Sam hasabout an acre of property, so there was some distance. Houses are pretty wellset apart out there. That’s the point of a cottage on a lake. Privacy.”
“That’s fine, sir. What do you remember next?”
“I’d say about fifteen minutes passed or so. Say, maybetwenty.”
“So this would be about what time?”
“I’d say about twenty, twenty-five past one.” He wags afinger. “That time of night, it stood out. Don’t see a lot of traffic turninginto our subdivision. At least, not in the winter, unless it’s the holidays andthe young ones are around.”
“So a car drove to Sam Dillon’s house at just after one inthe morning, Sunday morning, and drove away some twenty minutes later?”
“That’s right. Yes. It was about twenty minutes later.”
Long enough, the prosecutor is saying without saying it, forAllison to return to Sam’s house and send an e- mail, at about 1:18 and 42seconds in the morning.
ONE DAY EARLIER…
A collective pause falls over the courtroom. Openingstatements have concluded. The prosecution has called its first witness, theonly witness this first afternoon of trial. The media has heard bits and piecesof the anticipated testimony in written filings and at the preliminary hearing,but never in her own words.
It has been a roller coaster, her twenty years. This will beas low as it hits. Allison remembers the moments, all in fleeting flashes, thesnapshots that stick. Who knows why certain memories stay with you while othersvaporize?
She remembers the nights, when Jessica was a child.Midnight, usually, when Allison would rise from bed and go to her youngdaughter’s bedroom, shake her awake and take her to the bathroom. Jessicaalways defiant, swinging her arms and moaning, her eyes sunken in sleep, herwispy hair standing on end, mumbling complaints, as she sat on the toilet andtinkled.
Allison was certainly relieved when Jessica’s bedwettingceased around her tenth birthday, but she would always concede a sense of lossas well. These were the times when her love was most tested-casual, everydaymoments when her daughter was most annoying and unwieldy, when she was mostvulnerable, when Allison herself was incredibly tired. Times like these werewhen she recognized most palpably the concept of love.
Allison accepts that she cannot judge this young woman withany degree of objectivity, but she finds her captivating. She sees tremendousbeauty and cannot imagine how anyone could miss it. Her cinnamon hair, acompromise between Mat’s dark brown and Allison’s red. Her thin eyebrowsarching over liquid brown eyes. Soft, clear skin that most would describe asCaucasian, though the Latin influence is there, too.
Yes, she is beautiful, and that knowledge has always tuggedAllison in opposing directions. A mixed blessing. She knows how men think. Sheknows Jessica will catch their eye, has already done so. There is such a thing,Allison believes, as being too beautiful, so glamorous that things come tooeasily. So stunning that men will be drawn to her for only one reason. Mat wasthe first to comment on that. I was sixteen once, he said, when Jessica wasthat age, with the wariness of a man who could read the minds of the youngmen-boys, really-who called on Jessica.
Allison had tried to keep watch over Jessica the way Allisonhad wanted it when she herself was that age. She tried to give her space, notappear overly inquisitive, create an atmosphere in which Jessica would feelcomfortable sharing.
Look what that had gotten her. She had thought it was oddthat her daughter, at age seventeen, had no boyfriends at school. Looking atthis young woman, Allison couldn’t understand how boys could not be interested,and despite Mat’s growing suspicion that perhaps Jessica didn’t like boys atall, Allison knew better. She asked, and her daughter put her off. They’re soimmature, she would explain.
When the police called, Allison didn’t understand, at first.It didn’t register. Her daughter and her sophomore geometry teacher, in theparking lot by the school’s baseball field. A patrolman had come upon them,late in the evening on a school night. There was nothing automaticallyincriminating about it. Jessica was fully clothed and the teacher was, too,though the patrolman explained to Allison that the teacher’s shirt was pulledout and it wasn’t too hard to figure what had been happening before they sawthe squad car’s headlights.
Did she want to press charges? Request an investigation?Allison didn’t know what to say, when she picked up her mortified daughter atthe station. They drove silently home. Mat was at the capital, so they had thechance to talk woman-to-woman without the hysteria of an irate father. Allisondemanded that Jessica explain herself. So it came out, finally. She admittedit. It had been going on for almost a year, since she was a sophomore and inhis class.
“I do,” Jessica says, to the court reporter swearing her in.
They didn’t press charges. It would be all over the place ifthey did. An underage girl’s name would be kept out of the press, but somehowit would get out. Jessica pleaded with her mother and father, and theyultimately agreed to keep it quiet. The teacher agreed to resign his positionimmediately and to never teach again. And Allison was left trying to figure outhow she missed the whole thing for almost a year.
She never looked at her daughter the same way again. She hadexpected secrets but not like this. She felt betrayed and inadequate. Sheexplained to Jessica that it was the teacher’s fault, that he was thecontrolling adult, but that Jessica had to take responsibility for her ownactions, too. She wanted to teach this responsibility while, at the same time,she wanted to hover over her daughter’s every movement but knew she could not.
