The latches clicked two times.

The radiator in the hallway of the Greenville County Courthouse ticked like a clock with a broken spring, and my dress shoes clattered on the tile no matter how carefully I stepped.

Uncle Robert was standing by the doors of Courtroom 3B, twisting his signet ring in a slow circle.

“Well,” he said.

“Look who managed to find the courthouse.”

Martha Hayward, my mother, stood half a step behind him with her eyes down in her purse, shuffling her keys and a pen from one side of it to the other.