“You’re distorting the situation. You seem to forget he could have told you the truth years ago.”

“I haven’t forgotten that. But with another woman he might have told the truth. Another woman might have made him feel safe.” I took the pen he was playing with and held it tight to steady myself. “He spent all those years loving and protecting his daughter the best way he knew how. Maybe he did it wrong, but he did it single-handedly. But the failure isn’t all his. It’s mine too. And Regina’s. Mostly Regina’s—I can’t help but believe that. I’m not going to offer him up with a lie to make Regina and myself look good. We’ll just have to continue as we have been and hope.”

“Then hope for a miracle.”

Mr. Bates did his best to create a miracle. Our next witness was the reporter who had photographed me scrubbing the graffiti off the front of the school. It seemed most of the jurors were impressed with this, but some of them changed their expressions when the prosecution pointed out that this gesture of mine had been “extreme and reactionary.”

We were nearing the end. When Frank would come to see me, he would don a smile and reaffirm his faith in the jury. But there was always doubt in his eyes when his words ran out. Invariably, I turned the conversation to the weather and world news. We never mentioned Regina.

I rehearsed facing the verdict, although I said nothing to Mr. Bates. My resignation seemed almost sacrilegious next to his perseverance. He was still stinging from my refusal to go along with his and Frank’s plan, but at the same time this fed his determination to win. There was a growing glint in his eye whenever he turned that pen round and round between his hands.

It was a Monday morning when I entered the courtroom and saw the pen not in his hands, its customary place, but stuck squarely in his pocket. He gripped my arm and whispered in my ear.

“We may have ourselves a deus ex machina.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have one more witness. Keep your fingers crossed.”

“Who is it?”

“No one you know. Someone’s volunteered to come forward. This might make all the difference.”

After the opening rituals, the judge called upon Mr. Bates. “You wish to call another witness?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I call Wanda Lowell to the stand.”

Peck High had its share of poor kids, mostly black and Mexican, but the relaxation of the dress code and the adoption of denim as the national uniform of youth had successfully eliminated the conspicuousness of poverty. Wanda Lowell was conspicuously poor. Her face was gaunt and sallow, her hair thin and lusterless. Her shoulders rounded to make a hollow of her chest, while her hipbones jutted forward like two tiny buttresses. The yellow and white in her dress cruelly accentuated her colorless appearance; the striped material did not match up at the seams. It was painfully apparent this woman had no time for, or perhaps no conception of, even modest vanity. I looked at her ankles, and remembering Frank’s story, I half expected to see socks sliding down them into her shoes. Of course, she didn’t wear socks. She wore white heels, dulled and cracked by several layers of liquid polish.