The next morning Mom was the first person on their witness list. As she turned to leave, I leaned over and whispered in her ear. "God give her strength and peace. Amen." She smiled. "I'll be praying." I said.

She was gone for about thirty minutes. When she came back in, her eyes looked sad and tight. She stopped and said something to Shelley. She came over to where I was. I stood and gave her a hug.

"Let's get out of here," she said.

We walked silently out of the building. There was a park down the street. Mom headed straight for it. We sat at a picnic table. Mom put her arms on the table and laid her head on them. Her shoulders started to shake. She was obviously crying. I didn't know what to do. Finally, I reached out and rubbed her back the way Seth does. She slowly began to calm down.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Brock said yesterday that he thought your testimony left no doubts in the jurors minds about your sincerity. I may have undone all of that."

"What did I forget to warn you about?" My voice was low and resigned.

"A selfie." She took out a Kleenex and blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

I groaned. "The one with the brews. That was on Marlow's phone. I forgot about it. I even made a copy at Walmart and sent it to Dad. How could I have been so stupid?"

"Well, maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed to me. I answered all the lawyer's questions about your lying to me confidently. I think it was clear to everyone that at some point you had confessed. He didn't even ask me when. The only thing he hadn't asked me about was the drinking. Then he put the selfie up on a screen using his computer somehow. I imagine I looked shocked, because he said, 'You didn't know about this did you?'"

She sighed. "I told him no, but that I wasn't surprised because I already suspected you had started drinking, before you confirmed it in your moment of true confession. After that he released me. I don't think he wanted for me to rebound anymore than I already had."

"Why was it so shocking? I had already told you I had been drinking. You knew that I had a low level of alcohol in my blood the night of the accident."

"It's one thing to hear it. I can sort of process it with my mind and divorce emotion from the knowledge. But to see it is different, at least for me, and I suspect most women. He obviously was counting on the emotional affect a picture can have. The old saying, 'A picture is worth a thousand words,' was certainly true in this instance."

Mom's phone pinged. She looked down. "It's from Cory."

She opened a text and read aloud. "You did good. We'll debrief over lunch. Meet us at Maria's at 12."

"So, why aren't you smiling?"

"Visual, remember. I need to see his face when he says it. Is he just being nice to keep me from getting too upset. And why do we need to debrief?"

I laughed. "Geez, Mom. You're overthinking this. Chill."

When we met for lunch, both DAs seemed to be in a good mood. There was a woman with them. "This is my wife, Deborah," Cory said. After we shook hands, he continued. "She's finishing up her law degree, specializing in jury selection."

"This is on me," Brock said. "So order whatever you want."

"You're sure upbeat," I said. "I guess Mom's shock when they put the selfie up wasn't as damning as she thought.

"I was watching the jury," Cory said. "That's the majority of my job during the defense portion of the trial. I don't look closely at the witnesses because I'm keeping the jury in my peripheral vision. I can't just stare at the jury, that would be disconcerting and obvious. But Deborah can. She's doing some kind of research on jury consultants; they're the people who are paid to help with jury selection and sometimes to watch the jury during the trial and give feedback. She comes to my trials when she can and gives feedback on the jury. I get the help I need, and she mines data for her dissertation."

"The jury was focused on you," Deborah said, "but when they flashed the picture up on the screen, they all looked away. They all glanced back quickly, but none of the face's registered any emotion that made me think they felt like you had been lying. And all the women except one looked sympathetic."

"The older lady whose mouth is set in a perpetual frown," Cory added.

"The one we wanted to exclude but didn't have cause, and we were all out of peremptory challenges," Brock said.

"What's a peremptory challenge?" I asked.

"That's the six jurors we can excuse without giving a reason," Cory said.

"I was specifically watching you, Patty," Brock said. "Your eyes widened a bit and you looked a bit dismayed, but you didn't show horror or anything like that. The surprise in your eyes was momentary. I imagine the defense lawyer saw it, but the jury was looking at the picture. By the time they looked back at you, you just looked sad, like any mother would who had to air her son's dirty laundry in public."

Mom looked relieved. "Good. I thought I blew it. I tend to wear my emotions on my face. I just knew the jurors could tell that I was distraught."

Deborah laid her hand over Mom's. "Not at all. What the jurors saw was a woman whose son made some bad choices that she is doing the best to deal with. From what Cory told me about CW's testimony, the women are going to think you're doing a great job of helping your son cope with the fallout from his rebellion."

"And since the crux of their case is to make CW look like the bad guy," Brock said, "we're feeling upbeat right now."

"They didn't have much to work with except to claim that a lot of the evidence for the breaking and entering is circumstantial," Cory added. "They are trying to get the jurors to doubt the unauthorized use of a movable charge. They know that their clients can be charged with possession, but they want the jury to vote down that charge since the narcotics were your Dads and you weren't charged. They've already plead guilty to the DUIs." He grinned. "The defense lawyer doesn't want to put his clients on the stand. I imagine he's afraid of what they might say if provoked."

"They haven't made a very good impression on the jurors just sitting there," Deborah said. "Several of the jurors looked over at them slouched in their chairs and showed disdain."

Brock's phone dinged. He looked down. He turned to Cory. "Mr. Sly Fox wants to meet us at Starbucks in five," he said.

"Does that mean they're going take a plea?" I asked.

"He will probably propose one, but I can't see any reason to let them. Can you Cory?"

"Not really." He kissed Deborah on the cheek. "Why don't you three stay here and finish up. I'll text you when the case is about to get started again."

Brock stopped on the way out and paid the bill.

We sat around and talked after the DAs left, or I should say Mom and Deborah talked. I ate and listened.

About 15 minutes later, Cory came back and sat down.

"Jake was willing to plead guilty to the reckless driving and vehicular negligence charges. Those are a slam-dunk for us anyway, with the video camera footage. They wanted to plead down the rest. We refused."

His food was already boxed up, but he opened the container and started eating. "Sorry," he said, after swallowing the first bite. "Court reconvenes in 15 minutes, and I'm hungry."

We all laughed. Deborah started counting Cory's bites.

"You know that's annoying," Cory growled.

She laughed. "You don't say." But she stopped counting.

We made it back to the courthouse with minutes to spare. Mom and I went back to the witness room while everyone else went into the courtroom. There were only two people left in the room besides us. One was an old man with a cane. The other was a woman who smelled like whiskey. The man was called. He went into the courtroom. He was only gone for 20 minutes. When he came back out, he went over to the woman. "Come on, Marybelle," he said. "They're not going to call you. I told that nice lawyer that you're half drunk and wouldn't make much of a character witness for Jake. He rested the case."

I watched the two leave together. I wondered if the old man was Jakes' gramps. The woman was probably his mother. There was a family resemblance.

After they left, Shelley waved us over. "They are going to give closing statements. That means all the witness testimony is over. You can go in the back and listen to the closing arguments if you want."

Just then Cory came through the door. He heard the last sentence. "I would rather you didn't," he said. "There aren't a lot of people in the courtroom. I don't want Mr. Sly Fox pointing to you or anything. In fact, I came in here to suggest that you let me show you out the back way. There are reporters in there from the Picayune and the Advocate. It must be a slow news day. Anyway, you don't want them snapping pictures while you're listening to the closing."

We left. Cory promised to call when the verdict was reached. Mom said she was just relieved that our part was over. The verdict wasn't high on her list of things to care about.

"It's important for CW, though," Cory said. "If they're found guilty, that should quash most of the social media hullabaloo."

The closing statements were done by 3 pm. The jury was given their instructions and sent to deliberate shortly before 4 pm. By five they were back with a verdict, guilty on all charges. When he called, Brock said that there was one vote for innocence on the unauthorized charge and the possession charge. He figured it came from the prune faced juror, but he didn't know for sure because he didn't poll the jury. The judge said he was going to take the weekend before handing down the sentence. He evidently had some leeway on how many years to give them on each charge, but Brock assured us that they would probably be old men before they saw the outside of a prison again.

I sighed. "I sort of feel sorry for them. They didn't have much support at home. But at least that's over for us. Now we just have to wait to hear what the judge decides on my misdemeanor charge."

"Now you can focus on Saturday" Mom said.

I grinned. "The One Day With God thing. The trial pushed it to the back of my mind. I can't wait! Uncle Clarence said the prison is on the backside of nowhere. What are you going to do while I'm with Dad?"

"They have a session for the caregivers," Mom said. "While you're bonding with Paul, I get to try group bonding with a bunch of strangers."

"Think of it as trying out the support groups like they have at the Angel Tree church. If it's a good experience, maybe you'll want to try their group. If it's the pits, then you can avoid making that mistake."

She smiled. "I guess that's one way of looking at it."

On Saturday, I was up with the birds. We were supposed to get to the prison by 8:15 to check in, if at all possible. The camp was scheduled to start at 9 am. They wanted to get as many of us as possible inside before regular visitation started. Even though it didn't start until nine, either, evidently people started showing up earlier.

When we turned down Prison Road, the clock read 8:21 am. As we neared the gate, we saw two lines of cars. One was pulled over to the right, and the other was on the road slowly moving through the gate with a stop-start motion.

"Which line do we get in?" I asked.

"I imagine the one they're letting in. June said they wanted to get us in before they started letting others in, so the line on the shoulder is probably the others she was talking about."

Just then a man, who had been leaning in the window of one of the cars on the shoulder, straightened up. He put a hat on his head that looked like the hats you see Canadian Mounties wear in the movies, only his wasn't red. He waved Mom down.

Mom lowered her window. "Are you here for One Day With God, Ma'am?" he asked.

"Yes, officer."

"Then you're in the right line. Is this your first time here?"

"It's his first time," Mom waved towards me. "I was here once before."

"Just drive on up. The officer at the gate will ask you some routine questions and check your vehicle for contraband before letting you in." He looked over at me. "Have fun, son. I'll be over at the camp later as part of security. I always volunteer for that detail. It's really great to watch the kids get to know their Dads in a meaningful way. You'll like it; I'm sure of it."

I grinned. "Yes, sir. I'm sure I will. I've been waiting for this day for a long time."

As we drove off, I looked at Mom. "That was interesting. That guard seems to like the prisoners. I thought guards and inmates were sworn enemies or something."

Mom smiled. "First off, they like to be called Officer, not Guard. They are prison security specialists. Secondly, you're going to find that a lot of the ideas about prison that you get from TV aren't true here. From what June told me, the focus in Louisiana prisons is rehabilitation not punishment. Sending them to prison is the punishment. The job of the prison is to prepare them to live in the free world again by helping them learn how to handle whatever put them in prison and giving them the tools for gainful employment once they're out. She said that some of the officers are old school and despise all offenders. That's evidently the politically correct term now for an inmate. A lot of the officers, though, think that offenders should be given a second chance at learning to be a useful member of society. Those are the officers like the one at the gate. They find satisfaction in things like this camp."

"Does that mean he's into Jesus?"

"June said most of the ones who volunteer for the camp are, but all the ones who think offenders should be treated fairly aren't necessarily."

She pulled up to the gate. The officer asked about weapons and alcohol. He had Mom pop the trunk and looked in the back windows.

"Go on in ma'am," he said. "Park as far towards this end of the parking lot to your left as possible. You see those tables set up over by those gates behind the parking lot at the end of the building?" He pointed straight ahead.

"Yes, sir."

"Walk over to those tables to check in."

"Thank you."

We drove into the lot and parked near the end. We got out and walked over to the tables. Mom told the lady behind the table her name. The lady had on a t-shirt almost identical to the one I got at Salvation Army, only the three crosses were intertwined with the date 2016.. She came up with two nametags, one for me and one for Mom. She handed me a turquoise t-shirt identical to her purple one.

"I don't get a choice of color?" I asked.

She smiled. "Afraid not. The volunteers wear purple, the kids were blue, and the Dads wear read."

"Ah, we're color coded."

"You bet."

She had Mom sign some form. She was explaining something to her about where she was going to go for the care-givers shindig, so I tuned out and looked around. Suddenly she hollered, "Braisford."

I started. I was about to say something when a man said, "Yo."

He walked up to me. "I'm Mr. Hugh Summerall," he said. "I'll be your sidekick for the day. You can call me Mr. Hugh."

"I thought my Dad was my sidekick."

He laughed. "Touché." He led me to the left, while Mom went off to join a group of women to the right. "What I should have said is that I'm the volunteer assigned to you. Every kid here has one. It's my job to make your day as carefree as possible. I'll serve lunch to you and your Dad and do anything else you want me to. If you need to use the John, it's my job to escort you."

"Escort me? To the John? I'm not two."

He laughed. "Don't worry, I won't go in with you. This is a prison, so the father's aren't allowed to take their kids to the bathroom. The older kids go in by themselves, but it's my job to stand outside and make sure no one disturbs you."

"So, you're the John police," I said. "You make sure I can't sneak anything in to my Dad."

"Nope. I'm here to pray for you and make sure you and your Dad have a good day. Security is here to make sure you don't do anything illegal. I'm your protector, sort of your guardian ad litem for the day. I make sure your rights aren't violated by anyone. But my number one task is prayer. I've had your name for several weeks now. I've been praying for you and Paul every day."

"Wow."