Jacqueline’s laughter, Theodore’s barely-suppressed grin, their almost giddy relief once they understood what I had thought, all of it was, if I had been able to read it, the clearest possible signal that I had made an enormous and harmless mistake.

Guilty people do not giggle helplessly when their crimes are discovered.

They do not turn pink with embarrassment and beg you not to make a mess.

The whole emotional register of the room was wrong for the story I was telling, was in fact the emotional register of pure mortified innocence, and if I had been even slightly less committed to my conclusion I would have read it correctly.

But that is the thing about a conviction held in fear: it turns even the evidence against it into evidence for it.