As the bailiff takes back his Bible and Shad rises from his table, my sister, Jenny, squeezes my left wrist hard enough to bruise. She’s fidgeting and sweating as though unconsciously trying to prove she’s my mother’s opposite.

“You were sworn in as Lincoln Turner,” Shad says, standing about ten feet from his witness. “Who is your biological father?”

“That man sitting right there,” Lincoln says, pointing at my father. “Dr. Tom Cage.”

“How do you know that?”

“A DNA test proved it.”

“That DNA test has been entered into evidence and marked State’s Exhibit Seven, Your Honor.” Shad spreads his hands, touches his fingers together, and addresses Lincoln like a more restrained version of Dr. Phil. “When were you first told that Tom Cage might be your father?”

“I wasn’t told. Not really. I had to dig that information up myself.”

“And how did that come about?”

“About six months ago, I discovered some checks and letters in my mother’s personal effects in her Chicago apartment, plus a photograph of Dr. Cage and my mother in a state of undress. My mother finally told me the story then. Up to that time, she had lied to me.”

“From 1968 until 2005 she had kept this information from you?”

“Yes, sir. She’d been lying about who my father was ever since I was born. And not just to me. She lied to everybody.”

Shad pauses to let this tragedy—or outrage—sink into the minds of the jury members.

“Will you tell us what your understanding of your paternity was, from the earliest time you remember?”

Quentin should object that the defense has already stipulated that Tom Cage fathered the witness and no further questioning on this point is necessary.

But Quentin says nothing.

“From the time I was a little boy,” Lincoln says, “I believed my mother’s husband was my father. The man I called Daddy. That’s what she told me.”

“What was that man’s name?”

“His legal name was Junius Jelks, but I didn’t know that for a long time. In my first memories, my last name is Taney, which was the name Daddy was going by then.”

“Excuse me, let’s be clear for the jury. Whenever you say ‘Daddy,’ you’re referring to Junius Jelks, and not Tom Cage, your biological father?”

“That’s right. I’ll try to call him Mr. Jelks, but it gets confusing when I think back to different times.”

“I think we can all follow you. Please just tell us what you knew and when. And, Judge, let me state for the record that all relevant documentation such as birth certificates, adoption records, et cetera has been stipulated into evidence.”

Judge Elder glances at Quentin Avery as though wondering why he didn’t challenge some of the documents to which Shad refers, but Quentin seems oblivious to this.