I looped my arm through hers and sipped my wine. Alice was a chatty, vivacious woman when she chose to be. Her brief answers with no embellishment were all I needed to understand that she wasn’t interested in discussing this further. And that was okay. I understood why she wouldn’t want to dwell on the past.

Grace cleared her throat and raised her glass. “To second chances,” she said.

“Or fourth, as it were,” Alice said, laughing lightly.

“To never giving up,” I said. That included all of us, didn’t it?

“Yes,” Julie said. “That. To never giving up.” We all clinked glasses. Julie cleared her throat and called, “You can come down now!”

I looked up and could make out two figures on the steps. Merit and Iris.

“Drink up,” she said to me. Then to them as they approached, “Kids, sit down. We’re having a family meeting.”

“Uh-oh,” Grace said. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

“Um, why aren’t the other kids at the family meeting?” Merit asked.

“Yeah,” Iris said. “Forced family fun usually pertains to them too.”

“Not this time,” Alice said.

“Oh, um,” Merit stuttered. “Well, if I could just explain—”

Julie cut him off, and Grace and I shared a look. She’d just broken Mom Rule Number One: never silence a kid who is about to confess to a crime.

“I want to talk to all of you about Bill and, in a larger sense, our reputation as a house.”

My face felt hot. “Julie! You can’t just—”

She put her hand up. “No, Charlotte. You and Iris are two of us now, and it is our responsibility to take care of each other. We might not be able to change what happens in court, but we can shape what happens in the court of public opinion, and I think we all know that, in a town this small, it’s usually the same thing.”

“That’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard,” Alice said. She looked at me pointedly. “She’s right, Charlotte. They’ll get jurors who aren’t close to the case and all that, but, come on. Is that true? How do we know that some of those jurors aren’t lying? Aren’t planted? We have to change people’s minds about Bill.”

“Well, great,” I said sarcastically. “Fan-freaking-tastic. Let me just hop right out and do that.”

Grace said, “Julie, apologies, but what does this have to do with the kids?”

“If all of you would let me finish, I would tell you.”

Alice made a motion like she was zipping her lips.

“First, I need to write an article in the paper about Bill’s innocence. I want to interview him—and, Charlotte, I know I promised, but I hope you too—and his lawyer and his staff and everyone who can sing from the rafters that he is good and honest and has been framed.”