The summer heat clung heavily to the small home, seeping through the screen door and settling in like an unwelcome guest that had no desire to leave. Henry Dalton felt every bit of that temperature as he knotted his thrift-store tie, listening to the quiet chatter of morning radio drifting from the kitchen.
He wasn’t the kind of lawyer his ex-wife expected him to become all of those years ago. She wanted him to be like the ones that filled the newspapers– the ones with sharp haircuts, sharp tongues, and even sharper egos. That was not Henry, nor did he ever have any intention of becoming it. So there wasn’t much surprise when he woke up one day and found his bed devoid of his plus one.
Dalton believed in justice, and his life revolved around making it accessible to everyone. He took pride in taking the cases nobody else wanted– the ones where the only thing keeping the innocent from behind bars was whether or not they could pay for it.
So, he made sure they could.
No, the man never took home much more than a modest income, but he didn’t need more than that. The highest reward for him was seeing the woman his little girl was becoming.
Her name was Carolina, fifteen years old, all long hair and opinions. She kept notebooks full of dreams and declarations, fueled by the kind of beliefs that drifted in late at night and left late in life. Carolina loved her father and loved that he believed in fighting for what was right. They were mirrors of one another in the way single fathers and daughters often become as they lean on each other against the world– even when neither knows quite how to hold that weight.
This was about to be their heaviest yet.
That morning, she watched him fix his tie, leaning against the hallway wall with a kind of quiet worry that she was trying hard to hide.
Like every time he got a new case, he told her he’d be home late as he needed to focus, which was normally very accurate, considering how ‘unwinable’ his cases typically were. She said she understood, though the way she looked at him told otherwise– a look he did his best to ignore.
She wanted to ask about the details of the case, but the thought of asking overwhelmed her with a sense of dread she had never experienced before. The dread was well deserved, as last night, Henry had made a decision that would soon test the fragile line between the man he was and the man he swore he’d never become. And damn if he was prepared to admit that to himself, nonetheless, his daughter. Carolina couldn’t place it, but even his existence seemed heavier than usual.
Like maybe he didn’t believe in the client.
When it was time for him to leave, he did so, thinking he was just moments away from changing their lives. So he silently kissed the top of her head, grabbed his jacket, and stepped into the stale oven that is the southern summer, completely unaware that his decision could coil itself around everything he was trying to protect, and suffocate it.
He first heard the story in a cramped interview room at the Grimewood County Jail. The man sitting across from him was Kai Halloway, thirty-three, broad-shouldered, his skin bronzed and burnt from a life working under the sun. The kind of man who handled decisions with rough hands and rougher eyes. To Henry, he seemed nice enough, so he took the conversation, but every word Kai spoke was encrusted in gruff and carried a festering splinter.
Even so, he still didn’t feel like a murderer to Henry.
Kai explained the situation in stacattoed pieces– his recently deceased grandmother’s attic, old trunks filled with heirlooms left behind by people who never believed in throwing the past away.
Somewhere among the porcelain kobachis and war medals, he and his brother found it: a brass compass the size of a man’s palm, strangely heavy, strangely warm. Their grandmother always said it was a relic from ‘the old country.’ It was an item of legend in their family. The object she always claimed was responsible for their grandfather’s success– and subsequent death.
An outcome that seemed to revolve around this damn thing.
Kai claimed it was an accident. He said that he and his brother had randomly found it and argued over who would keep it, shouting turned to pushing. And then, suddenly, Kenji had apparently lunged at him, but somehow slipped and hit his head on their father’s old wooden rocking horse. His skull splintered with the wood, and within a matter of minutes, he was gone.
Kenji’s body ended up beneath the underpass off Route 9, left in the shadows where the concrete walls hid everything but graffiti.
Kai said he wasn’t thinking right.
Henry believed him.
Sweat poured down Kai’s brow in furious streaks as Henry listened without interrupting. He just took notes in quick, tangled script, watching the way Kai’s hands trembled when he mentioned the compass, but stayed steady when he described his brother’s death. That inconsistency lodged itself in Henry’s mind like a pair of chipped fangs.
After an hour, Kai leaned in and made his offer.
Not in the pleading way that would be expected from a wrongfully accused man. And not even in the foolish chatter way of desperate men. Instead, it was spoken in a low, careful voice, like the breath of a sniper before pulling the trigger.
He said that if Henry won the case– if he got him acquitted– then the compass would be his. Henry and his family would never have to worry again.
He promised it like a secret blessing.
Kai described the compass’s strange behavior that made it so valuable– the way the needle didn’t point north, but shifted depending on the wealth before it. The way it tugged faintly, like something inside wanted to guide the hand. Their grandmother called it a ‘uranaishi’ – ‘a fortune-teller’ – she said it seemed to hum when her husband thought about money, business deals, and risk. She blamed it for his early death and swore she destroyed it. The brothers had never actually seen it until that day.
The story was strange, but it didn’t feel outlandish– at least not the discussion of it. Henry had heard stranger things. Stories like this weren’t uncommon in Grimewood’s midnight bar talk, but this was the first time he ever heard anything like this from a client. His small city had hidden pockets where the old world’s eccentricities stayed alive.
Henry didn’t answer right away. But something in his chest tightened, a small bruising pinch that felt like shame and longing tangled together. The lawyer was no longer sure if he believed him, not about the compass, but about Kenji’s death. Against his better judgment, he took the case.
That night, Henry microwaved leftover spaghetti while the kitchen fan hummed uselessly against the heat. The summer seemed almost unbearable this year. Their central air conditioner had finally quit on them, and he just couldn’t afford to pay for its repairs. Carolina offered to get a job, but what little she could bring in wasn’t enough to make the young girl sacrifice her teenage years.
Henry internally swore that’s why he said yes to Kai.
Over dinner, he told Carolina he had a stressful case and would be dedicating a lot of time to it. After a long pause, she asked if it involved someone dangerous. A question she had never asked before.
“All criminals are dangerous in one way or another,” he assured her. Her stomach tightened.
The word ‘criminal’ was one she had never heard her father use to describe one of his clients before. She wanted to confront him about this, but he had never openly lied to her before. The fear of giving him the chance outweighed the curiosity. So the girl simply laughed, short and soft, making sure it was riddled with falsity, in the way only a teenager can.
Henry noticed.
Later, when he received a phone call, it was from Kai’s personal phone. He had somehow managed to post the astronomical bail placed on him despite his blue-collar background. Henry stepped outside to speak quietly.
Another thing he never did.
Carolina sat in her room, drawing letters on a sign for a protest she was organizing at her school. The sound of her father’s voice drifted through the drywall. She didn’t mean to overhear, but some words don’t require direct intention– only coincidence and thin walls.
The phone call was brief. Kai informed his lawyer he was bringing the compass to the next meeting– and had proof of its ability, and that proof would be enough to show Henry how quickly his life could turn around. He also managed to sneak in a vague threat of how easy it would be to find a defense attorney willing to accept this blessing.
Unfortunately, those weren’t the words Carolina had heard.
Instead, she only heard her father’s side of the conversation. The phrase ‘no, I’m willing to do anything’ and then ‘you’ll actually give me it?’ followed by a somber ‘just don’t give me the actual details.’
She stopped drawing. The marker hovered. There wasn’t enough for her to understand the whole situation. Still, Carolina had heard enough to understand her father was considering defending someone he didn’t believe was innocent in exchange for something valuable. She imagined her father lying, twisting the truth in a courtroom, letting a criminal go free. She imagined being the daughter of a man who fought for financial gain, not freedom.
Disappointment rose in her chest, hot and dizzying.
When he came back inside, she wanted to ask outright about his phone call, but instead decided it was best to frame it around her protest at school. So she waited, and as he was preparing for bed, she stood in the doorway of his bedroom and carefully asked if he would ever support lying to win.
He froze, just for a beat. If this were a week ago, there would have been no pause. Just an emphatic no. But this wasn’t a week ago.
Henry buried his dignity with a solemn swallow and said, “Sometimes good people have to make arguments they don’t believe, but that didn’t mean they were lying. They were just reaching for a deeper truth.”
That was the first time Carolina ever heard her father sound like a lawyer. And her heart fell through the floor.
***
Over the next week, Henry worked the case like any other. He visited the underpass where the body had been found. The graffiti shone in the headlights of passing cars, the colors bleeding into each other like smearing rain.
How the hell anyone ever found Kenji’s body at all was a shock to him.
There Henry stood, imagining Kai dragging the body, the crunching of his corpse being shoved between the concrete, existing in the awful silence that must have followed afterward. He knew he didn’t want details. Yes, he agreed to win the case for him, but he refused to lie. And the more he learned, the less it felt right. The underpass didn’t look like the place a loving brother, overcome with panic, would dump his brother after an accident.
This felt like a calculated murder.
However, the compass was real. To Henry’s shock, it predicted the winnings of each and every scratch-off lottery ticket they purchased the day Kai showed it to him. Like a drug dog, its arrow nosed toward each roll that had a winning of any kind. They stopped their experiment that afternoon with $3,400, which Kai let Henry have without a flutter of an eyelash. The following morning, Henry placed an order to have his air conditioner repaired.
Carolina was too disappointed to be grateful.
Henry left the underpass and went directly to the Halloway house, the location Kai had admitted his brother had died at. The grandmother’s old property had been left largely untouched by anyone who didn’t possess a badge and an oath. The crime scene, as it was being called, was exactly as Kai described it– an ordinary attic filled with boxed memories and the lingering smell of dust baking in the scorching summer. The floor creaked under his feet as he approached the rocking horse. The edge of the rocker was disconnected from the base, its edge splintering like it had been kicked free. The part that connected with Kenji’s skull was now long gone, sitting in a forensics lab, but the story as to why it was there at all still lingered with rising heat.
Henry imagined two adult brothers arguing over a compass the way boys might fight over a toy. He could imagine the moment one swing turned into two. But he couldn’t see a lunge, nor a slip. Instead, he saw a greedy brother making a weapon from a toy and slaying his brother with it.
***
Every night, he came home exhausted. And every night, Carolina seemed a little further away. She asked fewer questions. Spoke less at dinner. She refused to talk about the protest that once consumed her life.
One night, when he arrived home later than usual, he found her protest signs smashed deeply into their trash can as if she desperately didn’t want anyone to ask why they were there.
***
The first day of court came, and it was immediately evident that it was a battleground. The prosecutor was a sharp, efficient woman known for closing cases quickly and cleanly. She summarized everything with a tone that made guilt feel not just likely but inevitable. She spoke about the rocking horse, the blood patterns, the underpass disposal, and the lack of remorse. She painted a picture stern and convincing– the same picture Henry would have painted if there were no compass.
Henry attempted to counter with photographs, jury instructions, and quiet points about reasonable doubt. He spoke like a man building a bridge out of thin twine.
Yet, he made progress.
Some of the evidence didn’t fit as neatly as the prosecutor implied. Some of the bruising suggested a fall before the fatal blows. Some of the timeline didn’t align.
For a brief, dangerous stretch of days, Henry felt hope bloom. The vision of winning was a successful veil over his morals.
He imagined a stable life for Carolina.
He imagined her smiling.
And then everything fell apart.
***
It happened on a Sunday morning. Carolina had been quiet for too long, barely sharing a word with the parent who was once her best friend. Comfortable in the unfamiliar breeze of the air conditioner, she asked her father if she could see the file for the case. She claimed she needed an example of how stories get told in legal records– for a school project.
Henry initially hesitated, but eventually agreed, as a part of him had convinced himself that he had nothing to hide. And maybe, she’d see that.
But she didn’t.
The girl saw the opposite.
She read the statements. The crime scene report, the underpass details. She even looked at the gory photos of Kenji’s decomposed body, nearly cooked by the season’s temperatures.
But that’s then she found the clear truth– the details that made Kai’s guilt undeniable. The exact details the prosecutor saw. Henry just listened, terrified to admit to himself that she was right. Outraged, she pointed them out to her father, screaming that his client’s actions weren’t ones of fear or panic. This was clearly premeditated. Kai was a man who had murdered his own brother.
When she was finished, Carolina had worked herself into tears. And through them, she asked her father if he still planned to defend Kai. Caught between shame and instinct, Henry said something he regretted instantly.
“We really need the money, sweetie…”
Carolina stepped back like he’d raised a hand to her. In a voice too soft to stand on its own, her words shot at him like a missile.
“I would rather be poor than have a soulless father.”
When she left the room, she left her father in shambles.
***
The day of the trial, the air conditioner did nothing for anyone. Somehow, the courtroom felt hotter than the air outside. Kai sat at the defense table, sweating, his eyes darting between Henry and the jury. Kai whispered to his counsel that he had to win– the compass was waiting for him.
The ceiling fans pushed nothing but warm breath across the rows of spectators. As hot as the room was, nothing was more searing than Carolina’s gaze from the gallery. She refused to go to school that morning. Telling her father that if he wished to no longer have a conscience, then she was forced to stand in for it.
When Henry rose for the closing argument, his heart felt like it was balancing on the edge of Justitia’s scale, only moments from falling in the wrong direction. He looked down at his notes.
Brilliant work, really. Some of his best even.
He had the jury exactly where he needed them to be for the final steps. Sat before him were pages filled with loopholes and angles. Up to this point, he had been able to get through this with carefully constructed arguments meant to bend the truth without breaking it. But in order to bring this home, he needed to break the truth into as many pieces as he could.
As good as the prosecutor was, there were mistakes she made that, if Henry were on the other side of that aisle, he would have seen immediately and avoided. That insight was all he needed to build enough reasonable doubt to hang the jury and eventually get them to submit.
The win was in his grasp… but he didn’t need to look behind him to feel his daughter’s glare. And he didn’t need her to repeat her words to hear their echoes.
‘I would rather be poor than have a soulless father.’
He knew what he had to do. So he folded his notes shut.
“The defense rests, your honor.”
Kai hissed a whisper of betrayal at his attorney. But Henry only answered quietly, “Keep your compass. Let the jury decide if you’re innocent. I won’t lie for you.”
When he sat down, Carolina’s eyes were full of something warm and trembling. Relief. Love. Pride.
And then Kai thrust a pen into Henry’s neck.
***
The jury deliberated for three hours. They found Kai guilty on all counts. Neither Kai nor Henry was in the courtroom when it happened. Kai would learn from a jail cell. Henry would learn from a hospital bed, no longer Kai’s counsel. The verdict landed like a stone, but it was a relief nonetheless.
With Carolina at his bedside, the late afternoon sun cut long shadows through the slats of the sterile white blinds. Luckily Kai’s attack missed all vital arteries, and the bailiffs were quick to restrain him. Because of the attack, Henry was released as Kai’s attorney, and new counsel was appointed. He was no longer bound to the murder with the lottery trinket.
After the results of the trial, Henry revealed everything to his daughter. The compass, its ability, and how he proved that it worked, and most importantly, Kai’s promise to change their lives with it. She just silently slipped her hand into his, a gesture so simple it nearly splintered him. Carolina assured her father that she wasn’t anything like her mother. She didn’t mind living small– she just didn’t want to live wrong.
He taught her that.
For a breathless beat, the father and daughter sat in silence, waiting for the other to speak. Henry spoke first.
“I haven’t heard you talk about your protest in a while. With all of this free time I’m about to have, do you need a lawyer? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I work pretty cheap.”
She smiled at him for the first time in months.
Because for the first time in months, the future felt honest.*
Liminal Window 