I loved Bill, and I missed him, and I wanted him out of here, but I have to say, that irked me. Was he not worried about us at all? I had gone to stay with my parents. That’s how bad things were. I mean, I’m exaggerating, obviously. Kind of. My parents were great people. They volunteered for causes that mattered, protested when there was a wrong to right, spent their lives in the pursuit of making the world a better, more equal place for all who lived in it. They were both professors; to my friends, my parents were brilliant paragons of knowledge and truth. And I never gave them a reason to doubt that. But the problem had always been that they were more concerned with the pursuit of knowledge than anything else. Including their daughter.

I read once that there comes a point in childhood development when daughters begin to cling more to their mothers, while sons begin to separate and break away. I might have been an exception to the rule because I broke away from both my parents. When I was more interested in playing outside than spending hours with my nose in a book. When numbers came to me easily and quickly, but I was never that interested in history or politics. And, most glaringly, when, instead of signing up with a nonprofit, I took a job at Bank of America. And then married Bill, who also worked in finance.

My actions were stabs at everything my parents—who thought that capitalism was the devil and the downfall of society—believed in. They told me not to get mixed up in that world. They told me not to marry Bill. And so, when I showed up at my childhood house in Chapel Hill and my mother said, “Well, Charlotte, what can I tell you? When you deal with the devil, you get burned,” I almost left. But I had frozen assets, no home, no clothes, fourteen hundred dollars in cash that, thank goodness, was in my wallet, on my person, when our house was raided, and a daughter to think about. So I swallowed my pride, shook my head, and spent three days holding my breath and shrugging off their holier-than-thou attitudes.

They loved us, of course. They helped us enormously, finding us clothes, feeding us, lending me money until, God and Oliver willing, we could get back in our house. But I needed love and sympathy, nurturing and chicken soup. That, however, was too much to ask for.

Now I had to face the fact that my husband was still locked up, that my life was still a disaster, and that I finally felt ready to look for answers. Now that I knew Bill was innocent, if I could help prove it, my parents wouldn’t be able to give me those I told you so looks anymore.