Jelks actually has pride in his voice, but the image he conjured only serves to tell me how radically different my childhood was from that of my half brother.

“I figured he’d found a way to lose Viola’s new will,” Jelks continues, “so the old one would stay in effect.”

“Objection, Judge!” Shad presses. “Witness is speculating and has no knowledge of any such event.”

“Sustained.”

Jelks chuckles low. “I know it probably killed Lincoln to give me that eleven grand. But there wasn’t no way around it, see? He still got twice as much for himself than if he’d let Vee give the lion’s share to that white reporter.”

“I’ve warned you about speaking out of turn, Mr. Jelks,” Judge Elder snaps. “The jury will disregard the witness’s last comments.”

“Right,” Rusty says in my ear. “Quentin was planning this all along, Penn. He let them spend two days hanging themselves.”

“Mr. Jelks,” Quentin says, “when your wife’s will was probated, why didn’t you come forward with the letter you read today?”

Jelks shakes his head, but then he goes through the steps for the sake of form. “I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And Vee was doing me wrong, changing her will like that. Illinois is one of the only states in the whole country where you can stop a spouse from inheriting. Anyhow, I sure didn’t blame Lincoln any.”

Quentin’s sigh is freighted with a lifetime’s weariness of dealing with self-serving convicts. “You were still Viola’s spouse at the time she changed that will, Mr. Jelks. But in any case . . . is there anything you want to say before I hand you over to the district attorney?”

Junius Jelks looks down at the letter in his lap, then out over the crowd. “Only this. Viola was right about me. I wasn’t no saint, as you can see from these guards I got with me. But then, I couldn’t afford to be. Lord, was it hard to look her in the face knowing how far you’d fallen short of what she expected—and deserved. But Vee was wrong about her brother, Jimmy. By dying young, that boy stayed a kind of saint to Viola. But it was him and Luther that got her in trouble with the Klan, got her raped and such. Not me. Ain’t that something?”

Quentin turns to Shad and gives him the first completely unshrouded look he has given anyone since the beginning of the trial. It’s as though a man wearing a cloak has suddenly thrown it back to reveal a gleaming sword. Shad actually slides a couple of inches back in his chair.