She had believed in Elena’s innocence, or had wanted to, but wanting is not proof, and she had had no proof, only a client’s insistence and a case file that said the opposite, and she had lost.

For five years she had carried the private weight that every honest defender carries about the ones they could not save, the two-in-the-morning question of whether there was something she had missed, some door she had failed to open.

And now here was the answer, on a warden’s laptop, and the answer was that Elena had been innocent all along, as she had said all along, and that the proof had existed the whole time, hidden in a child’s toy, beyond anyone’s reach.

Sarah’s hand was still pressed to her mouth.