He never once asked her a direct question.

That was the part he would be least able to forgive in himself.

He was a man who had built a career on due diligence — who would not sign a nine-figure deal without three independent inspections — and he had allowed a woman who had cared for his children for five years to be tried and convicted in his own head without ever calling her into a room and asking.

What finally moved him was not the earring or the towels.