But she had never, for one moment, lost the two things that mattered most: her clear-eyed grasp of the truth, and her patient certainty that the truth, recorded and preserved, would one day have its day.

She kept her dignity where they could not reach it, in a notebook, in the dark, and she waited.

And when her son finally came, she handed him not tears, but evidence.

That is who his mother had been all along, underneath the silence Veronica so badly misjudged.

Chapter 18 — I’m Done Lying for You

Veronica turned furiously on her husband.

“Tell them, Derek!