Serenity glances at the door to the den, as though Mia or Annie might hear her. “I mean, of everyone in your family, she seems the least like she fits.” Whatever my facial reaction, Serenity feels encouraged to go on. “And why does she live in England?”

“It’s complicated. Jenny was seven years ahead of me in school, and she was a star. But she didn’t want to teach back then. She wanted to write. She majored in English lit and spent her first four postgrad years writing two novels that together sold about three hundred copies. I, on the other hand, never set out to be a writer. It was simply something I stumbled into after tiring of my career as a prosecutor.”

“Oh boy.”

“You can imagine the rest. When my first novel sold at auction, then hit the bestseller lists, Jenny began taking visiting professorships overseas. Ultimately, she married an Englishman and remained over there to raise her children. Jenny would say ‘rear’ her children, of course, but that kind of grammatical precision will get you a cup of coffee if you add three dollars to it.”

“Do you feel guilty about that? Her reaction?”

Before I can answer, my mother appears in the door that leads to the den. “How are you two doing? Is there anything going on with Tom’s case that I don’t know about?”

Serenity and I share a look. Though she doesn’t change her expression, I sense she’s telling me to come clean with my mother. Without giving her too many specifics, I tell Mom that an original Double Eagle is about to turn state’s evidence against his fellow criminals, and there’s a chance that he could testify tomorrow in Dad’s trial.

“If the U.S. attorney completes the plea deal and allows it,” I conclude, “I think that man’s testimony alone could constitute reasonable doubt and result in Dad’s acquittal.”

Mom stares at me in silence for several seconds. “Is your tea still warm?” she asks.

I pick up my cup and hold it out to her. “I’ve hardly touched it.”

When she takes the cup, I see her hand shaking. Serenity gives her an encouraging smile, but in this moment I realize that my mother is barely holding herself together. She takes a long swallow of tea, then focuses in the middle distance.

“Quentin did a fine job with his opening statement, didn’t he? He floored that jury. I—I think we’re going to have to trust that Quentin is still the legal lion he was when the whole world knew his name.”

“He stunned them, all right,” I reply, and leave it there. I’m not about to make Mom face how risky Quentin’s strategy is.

“I think I’m going up,” she says. “It’s been a long day. May I keep your tea?”

“It’s yours now.”