She ate and watched him for a while. “Why?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’ve read some on the internet. This is important to you. A part of who you are, and I think I’m at the point I should know about this and have an opinion.”

“Are you sure?”

“At first I thought I’d let it sit a while to see how you and I worked out, what our relationship was, before I pushed it. Then I panicked thinking, oh my God what if I ask her and I don’t believe her? So I read stuff online. Some of the pieces you’ve written and those written after your father lost his appeals. I want to hear your explanation. Your intro to the case. I know you have one. I want to understand it better. Please.”

And over the next two hours she laid it all out. The same things he’d already been bothered by, like the lack of any real motive and the way the DNA at the scene that didn’t match her father’s had never been followed up on. She explained how each time they had something new they couldn’t just automatically take it to court, that there had to be a basis for each thing that she could bring up to the court and new evidence wasn’t always enough.

And when she’d finished, he began to take notes and ask follow-up questions.

They sat in his hot tub, breath misting in the night air. “Jesus.”

She looked up at the sky.

“I believe you. Your father is innocent.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I don’t. But I believe it anyway. How freaking aggravating. All that legal stuff, the hoops. I had no idea it was so complicated. And now I have even more admiration for you. You’ve done all this?”

“It started when I was eighteen. I went to college at UCLA, and I had the ability and resources to start digging. So I did. I didn’t have much of anything. I started teaching myself how to do stuff. I saved up and paid for legal help when I could. In time I was able to get some low-cost help. I only had to pay filing fees in some cases. But I knew if I went to law school, I could arm myself better. Be more able to free him finally. And I got involved with the Innocence Project and started speaking nationally, and my grandmother would call and yell at me about how I was betraying my mother. I’ve tried to tell them, tried to get them to allow me to show them all the evidence but they refused.

“I had my own money then, and I was able to hire appellate attorneys who were far better than me to do that work. We had some significant movement and then he got sick. We put aside most of our main work with his case and began petitioning the court to commute his sentence or transfer him to a prison with a hospital better suited to his particular cancer.”

She drank, silent a while before she continued. “And during that time I came to my grandparents and begged them to at least let me tell them what I knew so they could better make up their minds. I only asked for a chance to talk to them. I begged for his life. But they refused.”

“Have you ever tried to talk to your siblings? Away from your grandparents I mean.”

“I was twenty and was just starting my junior year at UCLA. I came back here for Mindy’s birthday, and my grandmother came in as I was answering a question about our parents. She grabbed my shoulder and hauled me into my grandfather’s home office. She was so angry at me she vibrated with it. She told me how easy it would be to influence my siblings to not want to see me. And she said it with such icy calm. She slapped me. Right as I was speaking she just hauled off and slapped me so hard my lip split.”

Rage shot through him. He didn’t like Abigail Lassiter one damn bit. From then on he’d be there to get Caroline’s back when she dealt with them. He wasn’t going to allow them to rip her apart anymore.

“She’s hardcore. And totally f**ked up. God, I’m so sorry, Caro.”

“She’s doing what she thinks is best.”

“She’s being mean and spiteful. Come on. That’s such a crappy thing to do to someone. She’s emotionally manipulative and abusive. She hit you? With her hand and with a threat to stop you from seeing Mindy and Shep.”

“Well the problem is that I gave in to it, and if they were hardwired into her worldview a decade ago? Shep, well he’s more curious about the world. But Mindy, she’s so wrapped up in trying to make our grandmother proud and be the girl who chose the right future. The most rebellious thing she’s done is date a Baptist.”

He laughed, kissing her temple.

“So I gave in and never mentioned it, and there’s this unspoken thing going on. Like I’m hiding it. But now? I’m feeling so much less inclined to let anyone make me feel ashamed of knowing what I know after I actually did some research. I know this case backward and forward. That they just won’t listen and realize the truth of this tears me apart.”

She blew out a breath.

“Caro, you can’t make things better all on your own. You’re making all the sacrifices here. I just don’t know how you could claim to love someone all the while reinforcing a divide keeping them at a distance.”

“I’m trying to give it time. So they can see I’m back for good. I want them to be able to count on me, and that sort of trust needs to be earned.”

“You came back here for them. For birthdays and holidays and you gave up a life in Seattle. For them.”

“It’s working with Shep. I mean over the past several weeks he’s been more comfortable with me. He texted me a few times this week. Mindy? Well since that brunch I’ve seen her once. The other times I was supposed to see her she cancelled. And now when I suggest we do stuff, she wants Garrett along but when I say oh double date, let me see what Royal is up to, she insists it’s more a girls-night thing. Only with Garrett. I’m weak, but I can’t. No, I won’t. If she wants me out of her life, okay. But she doesn’t. But she’s also letting this guy control her and it’s gross and I can’t pretend my way past that. So we had an argument about it, and I know it makes things worse but I only have so much patience with this dumb crap.”