“I didn’t. But the governor says I should. Red Bosch says I should. He says your dad was too drunk to do it. Bailey says the same thing. But it’s hard for me to take in information like that, because I’ve grown up hating your dad and being really scared of him.”

“Me, too.”

“What?” Jody stood up in surprise, brushing off her jeans. “What did you say, Collin?”

He turned his head and looked toward where Ray’s car was parked at the other end of the block. Looking back at Jody, he said, “Billy scares me, too, and he always has. When he used to come home drunk, I’d make myself stay up all night to keep an eye on him.”

“Why?”

“In case he started beating on my mom.”

“Oh, God, Collin. And beating on you, too?”

He shrugged, sloughing off whatever was the truth of that.

“Then why’d you do this for him, Collin? Why?”

“You mean beyond the fact that we’re not supposed to convict people unless they’re guilty of the crime for which they’re charged?”

“Is there more to it than that?”

“Yeah, there is.” His face-his handsome face, she thought-looked grim, and he gave her a probing look as if to try to figure out how she might take what he said next. “I’ve known from the beginning that he didn’t do it, Jody. The night your dad died? It was one of those times I just told you about, when I stayed awake all night to watch Billy.”

Her heart was pounding so hard she almost couldn’t hear him.

She noted how Collin called his father by his first name, as if he didn’t want to call him “Dad.”

“That night, he passed out on the couch and I watched him from the hallway. When he got up to use the bathroom, I followed him. It was exactly the sort of thing I’d done a lot of times before. He went out to the backyard and climbed into our hammock. I thought he was going to dump himself onto the ground, and if he had I wouldn’t have helped him up. I would have let him lie there. But he didn’t. He fell into it and started snoring. I sat on our back stoop and watched him until the sun came up. He never left, Jody. He didn’t go anywhere. He didn’t go to your house and hurt your parents. I’ve always known that, because I watched him all night.”

Chills were running through her nonstop.

“You were, what, seven? Maybe you fell asleep and you didn’t know it?”

“But I didn’t. I never did. I felt responsible for my mother’s life. I couldn’t fall asleep.”

She felt so confused and overwhelmed that she couldn’t speak.

Her voice came out sounding choked. “Why didn’t you say anything-”

“I did. Nobody believed me except Mom and Red. Mom and I went to the sheriff to tell him and he lectured her for using her son to lie for her husband. That was awful.” He shook his shoulders in a voluntary shudder and looked away, down toward the other end of the street and the other deputy’s car. “After that, she didn’t want me telling anybody.” Collin looked back at Jody again. “People wonder why she stuck with my dad, don’t they?”

She nodded. “Are you aware that they think she hooked up with Byron at the grocery store?”

He snorted. “That’s all in Byron’s mind. To her, he’s just her boss.”

“Why does your mom stay with your dad, Collin?”

“Because she knows he didn’t kill anybody and she used to love him and she feels guilty about him and she always hoped he might change.” Collin shook his head. “He’ll never change. She’s seeing that now. They’ve already been fighting. My mom refused to let him in her bedroom tonight and he was so angry about it that I know he would have hit her if I hadn’t been there.”

Jody couldn’t keep her hands from flying to her mouth.

“Here’s an irony for you,” Collin said, sounding bitter. Jody wanted to go to him and take his hands and squeeze them to comfort him, but she brought her hands down from her mouth and kept them at her sides instead, and stood there listening. “He’s sleeping in the hammock again, just like he used to do. Only this time he doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk. We couldn’t stop him from having a few beers at Bailey’s, but I wouldn’t buy him any more to take home. Now he’s just a stone-cold sober son of a bitch. You saw how he is. I’m getting him away from her as soon as she’ll let me, which I have a feeling may be first thing in the morning.”

Jody swallowed. “So you felt you had to get him out of prison because…”

“Because otherwise I’d have to go through my life knowing my own father had been wrongly convicted and I hadn’t done anything about it. And because my mother knew it, too.”

“You remind me of my grandfather.”

He looked askance at that. “Why?”

“Men of principle, both of you. It can cause a lot of grief.”

Collin looked taken aback at that, but then he said, “Yeah. I’m afraid I’ve caused you some of that today.”

“Oh, hell, what’s a little more?” she said with false lightness, and then felt ashamed for the self-pitying sound of it. She lowered her head so she didn’t have to look him in the eye. Although she heard his feet moving over the distance separating them, she was still surprised when she felt the heat of his body right in front of her. They stood on an incline with her slightly above him, which still didn’t bring her face level with his. Somehow gravity pulled her close to him and she found herself pressed against him. Collin’s arms came around her, and hers went around him, and he rested his chin on top of her head as she breathed in the scent of his skin. They stood like that for several minutes, neither of them saying anything, but their arms getting tighter around each other, holding on as if this were the only chance they’d ever have to embrace. There was a moment when Jody thought she felt him kiss her hair. She shivered and pressed even closer into his body, feeling more deeply comforted by his touch than she had ever felt before and wanting with all of her heart to give back to him the same profound feeling.

It felt so wonderful and so impossible that she wanted to weep.

Finally, she pulled away and Collin released her.

Jody looked into his eyes once more and then turned and walked away from him. One hesitant step. Two steps. She didn’t hear him do the same so she guessed he was watching her go. Unable to bear leaving him, she turned around to see if he was there, which was why she could see the shocked and frightened look on his face-which mirrored hers-when they both heard a sound that could only have been a gunshot coming from the direction of his parents’ house. There was no other sound, no scream that followed it, no other boom of gunfire, just the one shot that cracked the night silence as if it had broken a sound barrier.

Jody started to run with him toward his home until he turned to say, “No, please! Stay here. Get out of sight. Don’t make me worry about you.” And then he said, “I’ve always loved you, Jody.” Shocked as much by those words as by the gunshot, she stopped where she was, then ducked back into the shadows beside the car in the driveway and watched Collin Crosby run home, his long legs covering the sidewalks, the street, and his yard faster than either of the screeching cars of the deputies could get there. Her heart screamed No! when Collin pulled open the front door and disappeared inside. She prayed frantically for his safety. She watched Ray and the other deputy park at strange angles in the street, saw neighboring lights come on, watched the two sheriff’s men advance cautiously toward the house with guns drawn.

And then she saw Collin come back outside.

Jody stood up where she was.

He walked past the deputies as if they weren’t there while they called to him, “Is anybody hurt? What’s going on inside?” Instead, he came straight to Jody and faced her.

Her voice shaking, she asked, “Is your father-”

“It’s not Billy,” Collin said, his face distorted with all of the emotions running through him. “It’s Mom.”