The old attorney looked up at me, and his tired eyes were wet, and a faint smile moved the deep wrinkles of his face.

He had carried this for six years.

He had watched my father build the trap and had surely wondered, every day since, which way his old client’s son would jump when the moment came.

“Right away, Bennett,” he said quietly, and there was something in how he said my name that sounded almost like relief, almost like pride.

I turned to Juliet.

She was staring at me as though I had spoken in a language she did not know, as though the thing she had just watched happen could not possibly have happened.