Everyone Was Sh0cked Why I Was Hugging The Boy Who K.i.l.led My Daughter. I stood there in that courtroom in my leather vest with my arms wrapped around a sixteen-year-old kid in an orange jumpsuit while everyone stared at us like we’d lost our minds.

By ten in the evening the emergency department was calm for a rare moment, giving Felicity a chance to check her phone, and when she saw Jacob’s name on the screen her first instinct was relief, until she heard the thin tremor in his voice saying that he wanted to come home because there had not been a seat saved for him at the table, and because her parents had decided that a smaller gathering was more appropriate this year. Felicity stood still beside the nurses station, listening as her son described sitting on the staircase, hearing laughter and cutlery from the dining room below, realizing that the room had been arranged without him in mind.

She did not shout or cry into the phone, instead she told him to take a cab and gave him the home address twice so he would feel anchored, and when the call ended she leaned against the wall and inhaled until her pulse slowed, knowing that any explosion of emotion would only frighten him more later.