On the day of the sentencing hearing, Paul and Laura Mathis arrived early, ignoring the reporters and their questions. They hurried inside the courtroom and sat in the back, Laura reviewing her statement on a smooth piece of paper, Paul beside her, quiet, still.

Over the next hour they trickled in: the prosecution, the defense, Eric Trumont’s parents and the brat himself, head held high. The defense and the prosecution stood at their tables, and everyone else rose as the judge took the bench and brought the court to order.

The judge opened the court to victim impact statements. Paul and Laura were here for Jessi, but the other victim, a high school senior, the only person who spoke for him was a grimy man in a beard. Jack or John or some other vanilla name, the man had worn a leather jacket with biker patches throughout the trial, trading it today for a cheap suit.

The grimy man spoke first, rambling on about his comatose nephew, and Paul wondered as he had for the past half year what Jessi felt in her last moments. Autopsy said she died of blunt force trauma. The cops had arrived late, the old Civic a burnt husk in a puddle of glass. Was that what Jessi felt? Scorching heat and shattered glass? The grimy man took his seat.

Laura spoke next.

She smoothed her blouse and stepped up to the microphone, clutching the paper. "When Jessi . . . " She wiped her eyes. "When Jessi was a baby, I used to... "

Laura choked up. Paul watched her, stone-faced. She hadn’t asked for his input, but if so, he would have ripped the paper from her hands and crumpled it up. What good would this shit do now? The judge had already made his decision. This hearing was just a formality.

"When Jessi…" Laura took a deep breath. "I just, I can’t. I’m sorry."

Weak, Paul thought as the bailiff helped Laura to her seat. You’re fucking weak and now they know it.

Laura held Paul’s hand and leaned on him, sobbing. He offered her no words of comfort.

There was no comfort to give. Over the past six months the story had played out so much in the media that it seemed like all of Tennessee knew it by heart: Eric Trumont, sixteen-year-old heir to Huma Energy, stole beer from Wal-Mart and ran a stop sign in his father’s truck, hitting two other vehicles. He put a high school senior in a coma.

He killed Jessi Mathis.

Paul had hope at the beginning, but as the trial dragged on through the summer and into the fall, he came to understand how justice really worked. Midway through the trial, the Trumonts’ lawyers brought in a pair of psychiatrists who introduced Affluenza to the courtroom, a condition in which the wealthy can’t tell right from wrong. They spun their tale over the prosecution’s objections. Affluenza, a special word, for the special people of the world, Paul thought of it as the bailiff told everyone to rise.

He thought of many things.

The judge rendered his sentence. "It is the ruling of this court that, taking the defendant’s age into consideration, he--"

And like Paul thought, the hearing was just a formality. Eric Trumont got six months at a rehab facility. Six months, for killing a sixteen-year-old girl, and after the judge banged his gavel, Laura screamed. She grabbed Paul’s arm.

He shrugged free of her touch. He no longer heard her. He heard tires screech.

Flames crackled and glass shattered.

#

Paul ducked out a back exit and got in his car. He stared out the windshield.

Affluenza.

His eyes watered.

Six months of rehab.

Paul opened the glovebox.

#

The media waited on the courthouse steps, their cameras clicking at the first sight of Eric Trumont. Cops escorted Eric, his parents and his lawyers to a black Lincoln Navigator at the curb.

Paul waited by a lightpost.

No one noticed him. He wore the same plain brown jacket he’d owned since college. He’d once thought of buying a new one, but his money and his time went to Jessi. She wouldn’t settle for a pointless career as a high school guidance counselor. Paul would make sure his daughter was a winner at life.

Eric Trumont trotted down the steps with his parents. Paul stuck his hand in his jacket. It was now or never.

Eric’s lawyers helped him into the Navigator. Then they helped his parents. Paul watched them pull away and long after the Trumonts were gone, Paul remained at the lightpost, hand in his jacket. He heard the lawyers’ arguments, the judge’s sentence, and overwhelming both, snapping flames and cracking glass.

#

"Where’ve you been?" Laura asked as Paul strode towards the car. She gave him a funny look. "What you got in your jacket?"

Paul freed his hand. "Nothing," he said, and unlocked the car.

#

At home, Paul dumped the bullets in the bathroom sink, resting a hand on the faucet, his head bowed. Down the hall Laura watched the news. Local news was running the verdict non-stop and since the wreck Paul had heard his daughter’s life story rehashed so often that what the newscasters said was phasing out what he knew, their voices toneless, no grasp of his loss.

Among the victims was sixteen-year-old Jessica Mathis, sophomore at Oakwood High.

Paul picked up a bullet.

Member of the National Honors Society, young Jessica Mathis was also active in the Astronomy Club.

Paul held the bullet close to his eye. One dead casing to another. He turned the bullet, the reflection of his eye stretching along the sleeve.

According to her teachers, she planned to go to Vanderbilt and become a doctor.

#

Paul went to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed and faced the wall, hand in his jacket. Laura was curled up close to the TV, watching the news as if it emptied and refilled her memories.

We have a box full of memories, Paul thought. Laura made it herself, and they’d started out by sticking notecards in there with cute things Jessi did as a little girl. They put in birthday cards, drawings she made (mommy pig, daddy pig and baby pig!) and her first report card, an E for excellence. The teacher drew a smiley face and wished her good luck in the first grade.

Paul cleared his throat.

"Can you turn that down?"

Laura acted like she didn’t hear him. Paul asked again. Laura turned off the TV and stared at the blank screen.

"When Jessi was a baby, I used to check on her," Laura said. "I’d peek through her door, make sure she was sleeping okay. We had her crib against the wall and she’d just be sleeping there with her arms behind her head." Laura’s voice didn’t break, neutral, a newscaster herself. "This is one of the memories you took away from us."

"Laura."

"We lost her, because of--"

Paul turned towards her, freeing his hand from his jacket. "Laura, please."

Laura fell silent for a moment. Then she said, "Sarah has an idea."

Sarah. Their lawyer was full of ideas, but if she had any good ones, Eric Trumont would be in jail right now.

"What’s that?" Paul said.

"She thinks we have a strong civil case. She said we can get five million, easily."

"You think so?" And Paul thought, Blood money. The Trumonts had never tried to pay them off. Why would they? They had the judges in their back pocket.

Laura turned to him with eyes as empty as the TV screen. "Yeah Paul. What else can we do?"

She turned the TV back on.

"Laura? Hey, Laura."

She cranked up the volume.

#

Paul tossed and turned on the love seat, a hand-me-down from Laura’s parents, until he could stand it no more. He got up and went to the kitchen.

A folding table faced the far wall. Paul used it as his desk. He pulled out the metal chair and sat. Over the years Laura had offered to buy him a real desk. Even Jessi wondered if the chair hurt his back, but Paul preferred it this way. Why spend the money, when they had something cheap that worked?

He opened his laptop. He reached in his jacket, listening carefully. Laura was probably awake, watching the news on mute or having a conversation with a daughter who was no longer here. Paul let a few more seconds pass.

Then he set the gun on the table.

A small revolver he’d bought after a burglar broke into their house while they were visiting Laura’s family for Christmas. The burglar never returned and sometime after the wreck Paul had grabbed the gun from the top of the closet, hidden under some old blankets.

Paul slowly spun the gun with his finger. His laptop finished booting up. He plugged in his external hard drive, and opened the photos and videos folders. He kept them organized by year. He began with 2001; Jessi was born a week after the towers fell, her birth breathing some relief into a world where fanatics crashed hijacked planes into buildings. Paul remembered the images: the jumpers, the people trapped on the upper floors awaiting their demise. This was how the world had changed in his lifetime. He held his newborn daughter and wondered what it held in store for her.

He skimmed the baby photos. Not here. He opened the next year, the next, until he saw what he wanted. He double-clicked.

In the video a smaller Jessi darted around the kitchen table, a younger Paul tracking her with his camera.

"Jessi, what do you want for dinner?"

Paul stroked the gun, and mouthed the words with her.

"Peanut butter sandwich!"

"How about Daddy read to you? What book you wanna read?"

Hand on the gun, Paul mouthed her words again.

"Peanut butter book!"

Paul raised the gun. Jessi had just started her first job, part-time at Burger King, and what did Paul tell her? Don’t feel bad if you have trouble, everyone starts somewhere. One day Burger King will be a distant memory.

Paul sat tapping the gun barrel against his head. He restarted the video. It ended. He restarted it again and long after it finished he was still tapping the barrel against his head, the words of a three-year-old girl filling the kitchen.

Daddy read!

Peanut butter book!