She nodded and put down the pencil.
Renee offered sandwiches. Nia chose one and asked whether the science teacher had sent the next assignment.
The question was so normal that Isaac almost missed its significance.
The trial could occupy the day without owning every subject they were allowed to discuss.
Isaac had repaired equipment in rooms cold enough to numb his hands. He had worked on roofs above traffic, carried tools through rain, and explained invoices to customers determined not to understand them.
None of that prepared him for stating his name while the man who injured his daughter watched from another table.
He took the oath and sat down carefully.
Voss asked why he went to the market.
“Groceries. A charging cable.”
“Who was with you?”
“My daughter, Nia.”
He described the dropped keys, the receipt, and Mercer's approach. He remembered being asked what he picked up and answering that it was his keys.
He remembered trying to explain where he worked because Mercer asked about identification and then interrupted the answer.
“Did you have a wallet that did not belong to you?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten the officer?”
“No.”
“Did you move when he grabbed your arm?”
“Yes. It hurt.”
He did not pretend his body had remained perfectly still. The purpose of the trial was to examine what happened, not invent an impossible civilian who never reacted to pain.
When he reached the part involving Nia, his voice changed.
Voss waited.
“I told her to go to the store,” he said. “I thought distance would keep her safe.”
“What happened instead?”
“He took her arm.”
Isaac looked toward the jury rather than Mercer.
“She was trying to get back to me.”
Lane's cross-examination focused on commands, movement, and Isaac's fear for his daughter. He suggested that fear could affect recollection.
“It can,” Isaac said.
“You have watched recordings since.”
“Yes.”
“Then some of what you now remember may come from them.”
Isaac considered the question.
“I can identify what I felt and what I directly remember. If you ask about a detail I know only from the recording, I will say so.”
Lane asked whether Isaac complied immediately with every instruction.
“No. I asked why.”
“Repeatedly.”
“Yes.”
“Would it have been easier to obey?”
Isaac paused.
“I thought I was answering a question about something I picked up. I did not understand that asking why would become a reason to hurt me.”
The judge addressed an objection, and the questioning continued.
No one applauded. The room was not a film waiting for one perfect sentence to settle every fact.
On redirect, Voss asked what Isaac did when Nia came beside him after Mercer fell.
“I told her to stay with me.”
“Did you approach the officer?”
“No. I was trying to sit down.”
When he left the stand, he felt emptied rather than victorious.
Camille met him outside the courtroom and asked whether he needed a quiet place. He did.
For several minutes he stood near a window looking at a service alley without absorbing it.
Then Renee brought water.
Lane questioned Isaac about the moments before Mercer approached, including where he looked and whether he noticed the caller. Isaac answered that he had been concentrating on the bags, keys, and his daughter.
He did not remember seeing Reeves.
The admission mattered because it prevented him from assigning motives to a stranger he had not even noticed. He could describe what happened to him. He could identify the assumptions revealed in the call. He could not honestly narrate every thought that preceded it.
Voss returned briefly to the receipt. Isaac identified it and explained why it was in his hand. The wet, damaged paper did not prove the absence of every possible offense. It supported his account of leaving the store after an ordinary purchase.
He was relieved that no one asked the receipt to carry more than it could.
When the court recessed, he told Camille that the exact questions had sometimes felt humiliating. She acknowledged it without suggesting humiliation meant the examination was automatically improper.
He had wanted a process that listened carefully. Some careful questions remained difficult even when asked for legitimate reasons.
The distinction did not make the day painless. It helped him separate the strain of being examined from the earlier experience of being dismissed before he could answer.
He drank, breathed, and asked where Nia was.
“She is safe with Serena,” Renee said.
The answer made his knees weak in a way the witness chair had not.
He sat down before going to her.