Rebecca looked at her lawyer, but he was looking down at his yellow pad, drawing little squares in the margin.

“We also have the sworn medical confession of Walter Evans,” Judge Vance said, turning a heavy page.

“He admits under oath to taking ten thousand dollars from Paul Mercer to record a live birth as a stillbirth.”

A radiator hissed along the north windows, the only sound in the high room.

“That is a class-one felony conspiracy,” the judge said, looking straight at me over the rims of his glasses.

I took my hand away from my collarbone and gripped the oak railing in front of my chair.