Magnus slowly paced up and down the third floor front hall, his fingertips lightly brushed over the hall table and bookshelves. He stopped at the back window that overlooked the rear garden. It was a largish garden, dug down and surrounded by a high panelled fence popular in the area. Wide gravel paths marched between beds thickly planted with vegetables. He toyed with the idea of opening the window, toyed with an ascent like a lead balloon, but pushed the thought away.  

He had worked too hard to be undone by a halfhearted attempt. After a moment, Magnus wandered back to his room. He knelt down by the bed and reached under, his hand patted around for the patinated brass bound box. His finger caught on a handle, and he pulled it out, smoothly across the old braided rug. The key was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table. A smooth twist, a click, and Magnus lifted the lid of the box.

The last time Magnus had opened the box, he had just started his therapy sessions with Dr. Shaw on Congress Street. That had been nearly eight years ago, a couple years after what had happened happened. Magnus had locked away the box where he collected sea glass, and old clock gears, a page from a book about George Elliot, three pieces of saltwater taffy, and an early edition of The Hardy Boys: While The Clock Ticked. He smoothed the pulpy brown paper, and smiled a little.  

After a moment, Magnus shoved the book back into the box, and locked it all up, desperate to forget, to return to his older self, tall and pinched, held in and together by anxiety medication and suspicion. He stood up and began to undo his shirt buttons as he opened the closet door. For a moment, he was back in the dining room, coffee in hand, as he saw the bits of exposed brain matter and matted hair. He blinked. 

Dr. Shaw had recommended that Magnus keep a memory box, to remember happy times.  That brass edged and inlaid one under the bed was a shrine to happy times forgotten.  Magnus could distinctly hear Dr. Shaw say that to forget happiness was to forget what life was.  Magnus reaches into the closet, and slowly flipped through his shirts until he found one appropriate to the court.

Rockingham  County Courthouse was a large, square building of red brick, built  with granite pillars and windowsills, it was surrounded by evergreens, and protected from view from the highway.  Magnus sat at the table with Geoff and a partner from Geoff's firm.  To their right, the State prosecuting attorney sat with two interns.  They were to select a jury.  

Geoff watched as either one potential juror or another was called up.  One might be too easily swayed, the other too stubborn.  The judge sat through the proceeding, fingers steepled as she watched the actions before her unfold through half-lowered eyelids.  The prosecuting attorney would raise questions about anything.

Finally, after the hours of deliberations, a jury was selected.  Three business men, a logger, two grandmotherly types, a four twenty-somethings in various degrees of collegiate decay, a retired school teacher of the old-fashioned sort, and what appeared to be a shambling pile of knitwear.

The judge declared that the trial was to commence within the week.

'All rise.' the Bailiff intoned as Judge Leavitt swept out of the room.

Magnus was to be tried as an adult, as he had just gone eighteen when summer first started. He didn't really think about how the trial would go. Instead, he and Geoff walked over to a bench by the window in the hall outside the third floor courtroom. Mr. and Mrs. Stark-Woolf were by the window. Magnus's father was an inch or so taller than his son, strawberry blond. Mrs. Stark-Woolf was the same height as Geoff, straight-nosed and straight backed. Both were in somber colors, he in flannel suiting, she in tweedy Patou.

'And?'

'The jury could be swayed, but it's doubtful.' Geoff shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other.

'We really shouldn't discuss this here.' Amelia Stark-Woolf said quietly. She led the way to the stairs, and the quartet descended to the side exit. They walked in silence to the car.

'What is the best form of defense?'

'There is none. No alibi, no witnesses, nothing at all.'

'But surely you could say that it's circumstantial.' Skip started the car, and joined the mass exodus onto the highway.

'Exactly. It's all circumstantial, but we could argue that there is mitigating residual childhood trauma.'

'No.' Magnus watched the telephone polls fly by.

'That's the only defense we can pull right now, unless you have something better.' Geoff said.