“This is not about Clayton.” Darren gave her a look and then she said, “Yes, he called me, worried that your mother was scamming you or something, saying you’d asked him to get some money to Bell, to pay her rent. And I kind of couldn’t believe you didn’t think you could tell me. And then Frank Vaughn came by my office and—”

“What?”

“The DA from San Jacinto County.”

“I know who he is,” Darren said, feeling angry and panicked at the same time. “What was he doing coming to your office in Houston? You didn’t say anything, did you? Nothing about the night I went out to Mack’s place?”

“Two days before Ronnie Malvo was killed? No, Darren, I did not tell a district attorney about you riding out like a cowboy in the middle of the night without calling for any backup to talk Mack down from shooting a man.” She swung her legs out of bed and stood over him, arms crossed like swords. “So that’s one lie, Darren. That’s one lie I have now told to an officer of the court.”

“He asked you about it? Directly?” Darren stood too. Did Vaughn already know?

“No.”

“Well, then, it wasn’t a lie.”

“Quit acting like you didn’t clear two years of law school, Darren. Interfering with a murder investigation is obstruction. I could be disbarred.”

“That’s not going to happen. Mack’s not going to say anything. And I won’t let anything happen to him or you, I promise you, Lisa.”

“Did he do it?”

“What did Vaughn ask you?”

“Answer the question, Darren. Did Mack shoot Ronnie Malvo?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you,” his wife said. She lowered her arms, baring herself, making a show of her defenselessness. “And if I don’t believe you about this, then I don’t trust you, and if I don’t trust you, Darren, what are we doing?”

“I was trying to protect you,” he said. “And Mack.”

“I love Mack too,” she said, but Darren knew it was a lie. She didn’t know Mack like he did, hadn’t grown up with the man. A Houston girl, she didn’t know the bonds of rural black folks, the way the earth and its seasons made family out of strangers, how folks helped each other out, surviving by sharing food or shelter; she didn’t know the way black East Texans lived or died by the stories they shared, warnings of which towns and which back roads to avoid. Her professed love for Mack was to mitigate the utter harshness of what came next. “But if he killed a man,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself again like armor, “I don’t care who it was, don’t you dare get yourself or your career tangled up in any of it.”

“Too late,” Darren said.