I just stared at one word. Uncooperative.

Everything I believed about my father’s death began to crack. For six years I had accepted the explanation — a deer, a glance away, a mechanical failure, tragedy arriving without reason.

That was what my mother believed. That was the story I repeated every year beside his grave with flowers in my hand. Now, for the first time, I let myself consider another possibility.

Maybe my father hadn’t died because of bad luck.

Chapter 7 — Harold Weiss

Two days later, an unfamiliar man knocked on my mother’s front door. He looked to be in his seventies, dressed in a brown cardigan despite the warm weather, carrying a leather satchel older than I was.

“My name is Harold Weiss,” he said. “I practiced law in this county for forty years.”