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  The nurse who had been Annalise's labor coach came into her cubicle, accompanied by Joseph, who looked frantic and overwhelmed by his surroundings. She left them to their privacy, as Joseph approached Annalise and stared at the wonder of his son. The baby yawned and pushed a fist out of his blanket. "Oh, Annie," he whispered. "I was too late."

  "No, you were just in time."

  "But you had to come here." When Annalise didn't answer, Joseph shook his head, mesmerized. "Isn't he something."

  "I think he just might be," Annalise answered.

  Her husband sat down beside her. "We'll get you out of here right away," he assured her. "I already called Dr. Post at Lenox Hill, and he--"

  "Actually, I'd like to stay at St. Vincent's," she said, interrupting. "Dr. Ho was quite good."

  Joseph opened his mouth to argue but took one look at the expression on his wife's face and nodded. He stroked the infant's head. "Does he ... have a name?"

  El se llamo Joaquim.

  "I think," Annalise said, "I'd like to call him Jack."

  July 3, 2000

  Carroll County Jail

  Have you ever really held the hand of someone you love? Not just in passing, a loose link between you--but truly clasped, with the pulses of your wrists beating together and your fingers mapping the knuckles and nails like a cartographer learning a country by heart?

  Addie reached for Jack as if she were drowning, their hands joined across the old table in the basement of the Carroll County Jail. She touched him with all the emotion she'd kept curtained inside her since her testimony. She touched him a thousand times, for every moment that she'd wanted to walk up to Jack at the defense table and lay a hand on his shoulder, press a kiss to his neck. She touched him and found that even something as innocent as the lacing of their fingers could raise all the hairs on the back of her neck and make her blood beat faster.

  And she was so fascinated by the way they fit together--Jack's palm big enough to swallow hers whole--that Addie did not realize the man she was clutching was someone who desperately wanted to get away.

  It was when he gently pried her fingers from his that Addie looked up. "We have to talk," Jack said softly.

  Addie stared at his face. The stubborn jaw, the soft mouth, the fine golden stubble that covered his cheeks like glitter flung by a fairy--they were all still there. But his eyes--flat and blue-black--there was simply nothing behind them.

  "I think it's going pretty well, don't you?" she said, smiling so hard her cheekbones hurt. She was lying, and they both knew it. Hanging over them like an impending storm was the unspoken memory of Matt Houlihan reading that former conviction. If that thundercloud had followed Jack and Addie home, every single one of the jurors was being dogged by it, too.

  "Jack," Addie said, rolling his name around her mouth like a butterscotch candy. "If this is about my testimony--I'm so sorry. I never wanted to be subpoenaed." She closed her eyes. "I should have just lied for you when Charlie came that morning. That's it, isn't it? If I'd lied, you'd have an alibi. You'd be free now."

  "Addie," Jack said, his voice painfully even. "I'm not in love with you."

  You can be strapped to the most stable chair and still feel the world give way beneath you. Addie's hands clutched the edge of the table. Where was the man who had told her she was the bright light getting him through this misery? At what ordinary moment between yesterday and now had everything changed?

  Sometimes, when I think I'm going to lose it in here, I just imagine that I'm already out.

  Tears arrowed at the backs of her eyes, small, hot darts. "But you said--"

  "I say a lot of things," Jack said, bitterly. "But you heard the prosecutor. They're not always true."

  She turned her head toward the one window in the basement, a tiny square of dirty glass set nearly flush to the ceiling. She kept her eyes wide, so that she wouldn't cry in front of Jack. And maybe because of that, she had a clear vision of her father, years ago, after her mother had died. She'd found him one day in his living room, sober for once, surrounded by papers and mementos. He'd handed her a box of knickknacks. "This is my will. And some ... some stuff you ought to have. The first letter I ever wrote your mom, my medal from the Korean War."

  Addie had leafed through the box, her fingers going cold and stiff. These were the items you collected when someone died--as her father had done after they buried her mother, as Addie had only recently done with Chloe's things. You pulled the loose threads of their lives free, so that you could move on. Addie watched her father place his fancy gold watch into the box and understood: He was putting his affairs in order, so that she wouldn't have to.

  "You're not dying," Addie had told him, thrusting the box back into his hands.

  Roy had sighed. "But I might as well be."

  Now, Addie turned slowly toward Jack. He had no will to offer her, no medals, no memories. But he was giving her back her heart, so that when he left her life, there would be no strings attached.

  "No," she said firmly.

  Jack blinked at her. "I'm sorry?"

  "You should be. Lying to me, like that. For God's sake, Jack, if you really wanted to end things between us, you should have used an excuse I might actually have believed. Like ... you aren't good enough for me. Or that you didn't want me to suffer along with you. But to tell me you aren't in love with me ... well, that's just something I don't buy."

  She leaned forward, her words aimed right at his heart. "You love me. You do. And goddammit, I'm tired of having the people who love me leave before I'm ready for them to go. It is not going to happen again." She stood up, anger and determination hanging from her shoulders like the mantle of a queen. Then she walked toward the door where a guard stood posted, leaving Jack to suffer the sucker punch of being abandoned.

  "If you don't get to sleep," Selena said, "you're not going to be of any use tomorrow."

  Two in the morning, and they lay side by side in bed, staring at the ceiling. "I know," Jordan admitted.

  "You're all knots." She came up on an elbow. "Although that seems impossible, after what we just did."

  "I can't help it. I keep hearing Houlihan reading the goddamn conviction."

  Selena thought for a moment. "Then I'll make you think of something else."

  "Selena, I'm forty-two. You're gonna kill me."

  "Get your mind out of the gutter, McAfee." She sat up cross-legged, drawing the sheet around her like a medicine man's shawl. "So this guy gets sued because his mailman slips and breaks his pinky on a icy patch of his driveway. Two days later, the guy's wife sends a threatening letter, via her divorce attorney. He gets so fed up with lawyers that he goes to a bar to drink away his sorrows."

  "Now that," Jordan interrupted, "sounds promising."

  "Ten shots of tequila, and he's drunk as a skunk. He gets up on top of the bar and shouts at the top of his lungs, 'All lawyers are assholes!' "

  "Excellent. And this is supposed to relax me why?"

  Selena ignored him. "A man on the other end of the bar yells, 'Hey! Watch your mouth.' And the drunk guy sneers and says, "Oh? Are you a lawyer?' "

  Jordan finished the joke. "'No. I'm an asshole.' "

  Selena looked crushed. "You've heard it before."

  "Honey, I could have written it." He sighed. "I need to get a nice, relaxing job. Maybe there's an opening for an IRA operative."

  "You ought to try working for this lawyer I know," Selena said.

  Jordan smiled. "You gonna sue me for sexual harrassment?"

  "I don't know. Are you gonna sue me?"

  "I can think of better things to do with you," Jordan murmured, but when she expected him to reach for her, he simply turned away.

  Selena leaned over him, her braids brushing his shoulder. "Jordan?"

  He caught her hand, wishing it could be just that easy to hold to the rest of her. "Are you going to leave me again, Selena?"

  "Are you going to smother me again, Jordan?"

  "I asked you to marry me.