You didn't even look at the evidence. They pulled her toward the side door. She fought. One shoe came off. Her purse spilled coins.
A bus pass. A photo of Trayvon at his high school graduation. Grinning in a cap and gown. The photo landed face up on the courtroom floor. No one picked it up.
Get your hands off me. That's my son. He didn't do anything. Her voice echoed down the hallway. Then the door closed and the echo faded.
Trayvon stood at the defense table alone. His lawyer had his head down, packing his briefcase. The officers waited to escort Trayvon to the holding. He didn't move. He didn't speak.
He just stood there, handscuffed, borrowed shirt hanging off his shoulders, and stared at the spot on the floor where his mother's graduation photo lay face up under the fluorescent lights. Diane sat on the floor outside courtroom 4B. Not on a bench, not on a chair, on the floor, back against the wall, legs folded under her gray dress, one shoe on, one shoe somewhere inside the courtroom. Her purse was gone, too, still spilled across the floor in there. Coins and bus pass and that photograph scattered between the gallery seats.
She didn't go back for it. The hallway was empty. The overhead lights hummed. Somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and closed. Footsteps, then nothing.
Her hands were in her lap, palms up, still shaking. She could still hear his voice. Cole's voice. No father, no future. She could still see Trayvon's face.
The way he didn't look at her when they pulled her out. The way he kept staring straight ahead, jaw locked. Like if he turned around and saw her being dragged away, something inside him would crack open and never close again. Life. No parole.
Her boy, her baby, the one she'd raised alone for 18 years. The one who made his own lunches and ironed his own shirts and drew bridges in his bedroom while she worked the night shift. The one who got a full scholarship, a full scholarship without a single phone call, a single favor, a single connection. Life. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes hard until she saw white spots.
Then she stopped. She dropped her hands. She stared at the wall across from her. And for the first time in 18 years, Diane Wells thought about the phone number. She'd never deleted it, never saved it under his name either.
Just the letter N. That was it. N buried in her contacts between nail salon and night shift swap Maria. She hadn't opened it in years. Hadn't thought about opening it.
The deal was the deal. She'd made the rules and she'd kept them. No calls, no visits, no shadow. Traven would build his own life and he did. And Nathaniel would build his and he did and the distance between them would stay clean and permanent like a wall neither of them was supposed to climb.