The Holdout

by Graham Moore

The world had begun to feel like a zero-sum game. Rising tides had never lifted all boats, she knew that; but now, to the extent that one rose, another seemed to roll off and crash on the shore. It was the unsparing physics of cause and effect: The wake of one boat became the wave that dashed another.

Maybe, of all the decade’s ironies, that was the cruelest. Not even the winners were feeling good about the score.

Being innocent often made it harder to construct a good defense. Innocent people always wanted to shout out what really happened from the rooftops—but sometimes the best defense, legally speaking, wasn’t the truth.