Three separate events that all led to my mother’s downfall.

And now there they were, all together, their hands in their pockets, in their gorgeous suits, free in the streets—laughing.

And for the first time since the trial I began to wonder about my mother’s supposed guilt.

Lander is moving slowly, each careful step bringing him a little bit closer. I back up a little more so that I’m now standing under the edge of a scaffold, making my position all the more discreet.

I can feel suspicion and concern emanating from him in equal measure. They vibrate through the narrow alley, bouncing off the graffitied walls like the echoes of a scream.

After I saw Lander and his crew outside HGVB, I started doing research. I spent hours in front of the library computer, poring over articles and court documents. Memories I had long since discarded found their way back to the forefront of my mind, but now they were weighted with new meaning and significance. Details that I hadn’t been able to make sense of when I was ten set off new alarm bells.

And slowly a new, horrible idea took hold:

What if my mother was innocent? What if I had wrongly turned on the one person in this world who loved me?

Yes, I had been fighting a one-woman war . . . but perhaps my mother had been an innocent civilian who’d been caught in the cross fire.

I could blame the Gables for giving me the ammunition to fight, but I’m the one who pulled the trigger.

If she was innocent, I was guilty.

I was the monster.

Lander is only a few feet away now. He reaches out to me in the shadows, stroking my cheek. So gentle, so sweet.

I close my eyes, my mind still in the past.

I became determined to set things right. I would get my mother an appeal. I vowed that when I visited her again it would be with news that I had found her a path to freedom. And maybe . . . maybe then she would forgive me. Or if not, then maybe at least she could recapture some of that love she once felt for me. Maybe I could scrape off this feeling of self-loathing with the edge of justice.

Maybe . . . maybe there was still hope.

Lander’s hands are in my hair. “What is it, Bell?” he asks softly, his voice barely carrying over the noise of the street only half a block away. “Where are you?” he asks.

I keep my eyes closed as I remember what it was like . . .