Vaseline

"Miss Callaway. You have to understand that total transparency is what I need for this case."

"I have been honest, Mr Keeny." She replied with a cool sort of bite. The thin, narrow girl was a very shriveled figure, like a skinny little grape dipped in whitewash. Everything from her skin to her long strands of hair was bleached in this light. Except her eyes. For the first time in an hour, her damp eyelashes fluttered up and she looked Mr Keeny in the face. Only for half a second- less than half. Only long enough for the lawyer to see that she had very deep shadows under her eyes. Then, they snapped back down and her gaze was locked to the bolts on the iron table once more.

Mr Keeny swallowed the discomfort those shadows caused him and continued, "Yes, I know, Miss Callaway. I know. Just," he chose to switch tactics, "Explain to me the chain of events one more time... Try very hard to remember every detail."

Mr Alexander Keeny, born on the fifth of March, 1977, hardly forgot any detail. When he was about twelve years old, his mother told him this: With all your fussing, boy, you oughta make something of yourself, go to some school.

And he did. Shortly after his graduation from Harvard law, class of '95, his mother passed away. But Mr Alexander Keeny was not one to forget, and his mother's words stuck with him. Make something of yourself. The only law, Mr Keeny thought, that would satisfy his incessant need to simply recall was homicide. Did he perjure himself? Did she mention a glove in the first testimony? To make something happen, and to remember was truly the best thing Mr Keeny thought one could do. Justice meant little to nothing to him, though.

That isn't to say that he fully disregarded it, he didn't deem it unnecessary. Only irrelevant to his cause. So defending a guilty party was his certain specialty- no conscience getting in the way then, only a job to do.

And so Miss Callaway was placed in his path.

Isabelle Callaway was but twenty years old when she killed her husband and sister-in-law. Something that she could not remember doing, much to her lawyer's very great annoyance. But she couldn't, and that was true. What she could remember, though, was that when she was a little girl she had had a temper. Not the normal kind, not the dizzy kind that made you lose control but a kind that gave her control. She would, perhaps, lose her temper with a bird on her grandmother's fence post. And her mind would be... Nondescript but perfectly decided as she might take that bird. Just grab it, very quickly so it didn't see her coming. Then, once she had the bird, she could take it to the forest behind Grandma's house- just far enough that if Grandma looked out from the porch, she wouldn't see.

Isabelle only lost her temper in a way that made her want to collect feathers.

But her temper had never been so extended to people, she loved people. That was why she married one so quickly, she wouldn't kill someone, if that was what the lawyer wanted her to remember.

"I told you." her lips wavered as she said it.
"Yes, I know, Miss Callaway, I know. But I need you to tell me again."

Miss Callaway sighed, and the faintest whimper escaped her as she did so. And her story began, just as it had a dozen times before, "My sister was coming over for the night, she was coming into town to visit because she hadn't been able to make it to the wedding three months prior. So I thought that I should go to the store and get what I needed to make chicken parmesan."

Alexander Keeny traced his eyes over a copy of her testimony while she spoke; word for word, so far. Because his eyes were busy, though, he didn't notice that Isabelle's shadowy green bulbs lay glassy and unblinking on him.

"When I came home, I noticed that her car was already in the driveway- in my spot -she was driving an old car. A very old car," She blinked once, twice, "When I came in, my husband kissed me on the cheek, and my sister gave me a hug- I remember squeezing her extra tight, I hadn't realized that I missed her until then.

"But she helped me in the kitchen, unloading groceries and making salad while I started the chicken. It's pretty easy to make, if you've ever made it before, you'd know. Pretty easy, but it takes a while."