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“Nothing unexpected,” I tell her. “Did you hear from Dad? How did it go today with Abe Lytle?”
“It was just the arraignment today,” Mom says, reaching up to ease a kink out of her neck. “He pled not guilty, and most of Henley lost their minds. I wouldn’t get on social media for the next few days, if I were you.”
“I try to avoid it,” I reassure her, but my mind is whirling. “But you know that video is already out there, right? The damage is done.”
“Your dad will do everything he can to keep that from being shown in court, I’m sure,” Mom says, reaching down to wiggle her fingers for Uneven Steven, who bats at them from underneath the coffee table. He’s unhooked from his wheels and rolled onto his back, happily wrapping his arms around her wrist as she goes in for a tummy scratch.
I swear that cat is probably going to get my room when I leave for college.
“Shown in court or not, everyone’s already seen it,” I tell her. “And good luck finding a jury in Markham County that hasn’t.”
“He’ll petition the court to have the trial moved,” Mom says. “For that exact reason.”
“But why?” I ask. “Why even bother with the whole thing? Why not just follow the lead of every other half-baked public defender and plea down, just this once? I know Dad likes to fight for the little guy, but this particular guy isn’t very little, and the last I heard, Lawrence Horvath is still eating through a tube.”
I might not let Bristal say a sideways word about my family, but when Dad’s actions mean that the rest of us have to wade through a waist-high sea of shit online, I’ve got something to say about it.
Mom reaches down and pulls Steven up from the floor, cuddling him to her chest. We like to pretend that we did that cat a favor by adopting him, but the truth is that even with all the extra care and medical bills, he’s still way cheaper than therapy for Mom. With Dad constantly working and me chasing down whatever extracurricular is at the top of the pile, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I come home to find Steven in a high chair and Mom cutting up baked chicken for him.
“You know how your dad views his work,” Mom says. “He always puts himself in his client’s shoes. And if he can understand their behavior, he’ll defend it.”
“How did he come to understand pulverizing an old man’s face?”
“By thinking about how Abe Lytle felt in that moment. He wasn’t seeing Lawrence Horvath as a human being; at that point he was an obstacle separating him from his son. Abe thought he was going to lose his child, and he relied on the one thing he’d been raised to do, what he’d been groomed for, and the only skill that was ever cultivated in him.”
“Violence,” I say.
“Exactly,” Mom agrees. “The public sees two minutes of Lytle’s life. They don’t know anything about the thirty years that came before that, and all the boxes that were checked in order to create the perfect storm that brought those two men to that moment.”
“So that’s how Dad defends him? He can’t create any reasonable doubt that Lytle did what he did.”
“No, but he can ask the jury to consider him as a whole human, not simply a criminal. He’s a man who just got back from a military deployment, where physical violence is the law of the land. And he’s a desperate father who is afraid of losing his child, after having already lost his wife.”
“It won’t be easy,” I say, stretching out my legs and enjoying the dual pops of my knees as the tension of the day evaporates.
“No, and that goes double for you. Are you having any trouble at school?”
“Over Lytle?” I ask. “No, not yet. But I’m so fixated on this podcast right now I wouldn’t notice if someone threw a burning effigy of Dad into my car.”
Mom winces and pets Steven little harder. “How is the podcast going?”
“Pretty good,” I say, producing a notebook from my backpack and fanning the printed pages of the Hometown Henley Headlines in her direction. “Lots of reading material about the tornado.”
“The tornado?” Mom perks up. “That’s a great idea. Everyone has a tornado story. Will it bother you if I turn my show back on?” Mom asks, but I give her a desultory wave, my eyes already roaming over the June 14 issue.
Tornado Tears Through Tiny Ohio Town
June 14, 1994
By Jeff Johnson
(AP)
Four people are dead, 50 injured, and more than 100 still missing in the small farming community of Henley, Ohio, after a tornado tore through town in the late afternoon yesterday. Markham County sheriff Bob Foxglove said they are trying to account for the missing people before bringing in machinery to sift debris.
“Every possible responder in the tri-county area was here, everybody all at once. We had hurt people being sent every which way, and until we can determine who ended up where, we won’t really know who is dead, who is missing, and who could still be trapped under this godawful mess.”
Although the governor immediately declared Henley a disaster area and deployed the National Guard, most residents of the town claim it was unnecessary.
