The Holdout

by Graham Moore

Cheating didn’t feel the way she thought it would. Affairs were things that cowards chose when their relationships weren’t giving them what they needed. Infidelity was the refuge of romantic weaklings.

The clandestine nature of their relationship created a feedback loop: Their romantic secret could only be picked apart and philosophized about together. So they wanted only to spend more time with each other. Sex was both the cause of their closeness and its effect.

And in this way they realized that a jury’s votes were like Tolstoy’s families: All “guilty” votes had to be alike in reasoning. But all “not guilty” votes could be for different reasons and still reach the same result.