Daniel woke before the alarm on the morning of the hearing. The bedroom was still dark, and for a moment he lay there listening to the house — the furnace clicking on, Megan breathing beside him, the faint tick of the hallway clock. Then he got up, showered, and put on the navy suit he had not worn since a cousin's wedding three years earlier. The jacket pulled slightly at the shoulders. He told himself it did not matter.
Megan was already in the kitchen, coffee made, toast going cold on a plate. She did not ask if he was nervous. She knew the answer and knew he would deny it.
"Call me when it's over," she said.
"Every detail," he promised, and meant most of them.
He drove to the courthouse alone. The parking lot was half empty at eight-fifteen, and he sat in the car for a while with the engine off, watching people climb the stone steps with briefcases and paper cups. A woman in a gray blazer held the door for an elderly man. A security guard laughed at something a lawyer said. Ordinary morning. It struck Daniel that this was how the day was supposed to go — people arriving, sitting down, answering questions. Nothing about it felt like the culmination of anything.
Inside, ADA Collins found him in the witness waiting area. She was younger than Daniel had expected, with a tired, precise manner.
"You're first," she said. "Keep your answers short. If the defense asks something you don't understand, say so. Don't guess."
Daniel nodded. He had spent the previous evening with the subpoena on the kitchen table, reading it the way a man reads a weather warning — slowly, as if comprehension might change it. Megan had sat across from him, doing the crossword, being near.
The courtroom was smaller than television had led him to expect. Wood paneling, a flag in the corner, rows of empty benches. Chris Marsh sat at the defense table in a button-down shirt, his hair combed flat, hands folded. He did not look at Daniel. Helen sat two rows behind him, wearing a cream-colored cardigan, her face composed. She looked at Daniel for a long moment. He met her eyes because looking away felt like a concession.
The bailiff swore him in. Daniel raised his right hand and the words came out steady.
ADA Collins walked him through it simply. Where were you on the night of May eleventh. What did you see. How certain are you.
"I was in my driveway," Daniel said. "I'd gone out to bring the trash bins in. It was raining."
He described the truck — dark pickup, the way it had swung wide on the wet curve, the thud that was somehow both dull and sharp, the bicycle going over. He described the truck not stopping, the taillights smearing red through the rain, the driver looking back once. He had not seen the face clearly, he said. But the truck — the dented rear quarter panel, the shape of the cab, the partial plate — he had told the police that same night, and it had matched.
"And do you see the driver of that truck in this courtroom?"
Daniel looked at Chris Marsh. Chris was staring at the table.
"Yes," Daniel said. "That's him."
The defense attorney's cross-examination was brief and bloodless. Was it dark? Yes. Was it raining? Yes. Could you have been mistaken about the plate? I don't believe so. Did you have any dispute with my client or his family? No.
That was it. No theatrics. Daniel stepped down and sat in the gallery behind the prosecutor's table, and the hearing moved on to other witnesses — the officer who took the first report, the body-shop owner who had repaired the truck. Helen did not look at him again.
Outside, afterward, the air was cold and bright. Megan called, and Daniel stood on the courthouse steps and told her it was done, and she said, "Come home," and he did.
That evening, Emily asked how it went. She was doing homework at the kitchen table, and the question came out sideways, as if she had been rehearsing it.
"I told the truth," Daniel said. "That's the whole job."
"Was it scary?"
He considered lying. "A little."
She nodded, satisfied, and went back to her algebra. Daniel watched her work and thought about the green chair folded against the garage wall, and about how a man could do everything right — preserve the footage, call the police, tell the truth — and still feel, underneath it all, like he had gotten away with something.