It was one of the most loving conversations a person could have — a mother holding her daughter steady through the worst season of her life — and Corwin had heard it as the sound of a criminal.

That is what suspicion does: it does not gather evidence and then conclude.

It concludes, and then it hears everything, even tenderness, even love, as confirmation.

He would replay that overheard call many times in the year that followed, and marvel each time at how a few words of pure devotion had sounded, to his prepared ear, exactly like guilt.

The staff had started whispering too.

“I don’t want to accuse anybody,” the senior cashier, Nkechi, had murmured, “but that bag’s too heavy to be a change of clothes.” Corwin kept trying to talk himself out of it.