Again Quentin should be objecting—feelings have little to do with facts—yet again he remains silent.

“I hated her,” Lincoln says bitterly. “I never wanted to see her again. That’s what I thought then, anyway.”

“Did you tell your mother that?”

He nods, and tears run down his face. “I told her I was glad she was dying.”

Lincoln Turner may be tailoring the truth to fit his goals, but on this point I believe he is telling the truth.

“How did you feel about Dr. Cage at that time?”

“I wanted to kill him.”

If I were about to cross-examine Lincoln, I would begin by creating the impression that by pushing hard for a murder charge against Dad in the beginning, he was attempting to use the legal system to carry out this desire for revenge. But will Quentin do the same?

“What did you actually do?” Shad asks.

“I broke off all contact with my mother.”

“Even though she was dying?”

“Yes. I told you, I’ve got some anger issues. Back then, I blamed her for everything bad that had ever happened to me.” Lincoln’s dark eyes move from the district attorney to the defense table, where my father sits beside Quentin. “And him, of course. Dr. Cage.”

“Did you have any idea how your mother’s illness was progressing?”

“After she came back to Mississippi to die, my auntie—Cora Revels—would call and tell me how she was doing.”

“Did you tell Cora that you knew Dr. Cage was your father?”

“I did after she told me it was Dr. Cage taking care of Mama down here.”

“Did you ever come visit your mother again, Lincoln?”

“No, sir. But I got to feeling worse and worse about the things I’d said to her. After a while, I wanted to tell her I’d forgiven her before she passed—even if it wasn’t quite true. I knew it would make her passing easier. Personally, I think it was telling all those lies for so long that gave her the cancer. It poisoned her.”

“Did you get to tell your mother you’d forgiven her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“One night, Auntie Cora called and told me she thought Mama didn’t have much time. She didn’t tell me about the assisted-suicide pact, but she told me she was pretty sure Mama wouldn’t last more than twenty-four hours.”

“What did you do?”

“I jumped into my truck and drove straight through from Chicago to Natchez.”

“Where were you when your mother died?”

“Thirty minutes north of Natchez.”

Shad bows his head and lets this terrible irony sink in. After a few seconds, he says, “Why didn’t you call your mother during that long drive?”

“I was getting updates from Cora, telling me to hurry, you know? Then suddenly she stopped calling me. I called Cora a few times, but I kept getting her voice mail.”