The truth embodied in these words—and in my father’s voice—is absolute. No one can doubt it. I don’t want to look at my mother, but I can’t help myself. Dad’s answer must have struck her like an arrow through the heart, yet she shows no more emotion than an effigy filled with sand.

“When and why did you first begin sending money to Viola?” Quentin asks.

“A few weeks after she left Natchez, a letter from Viola arrived at my clinic. It wasn’t addressed to me, but to the other female employees. I copied down the return address. It was a P.O. box in Chicago. I knew Viola probably needed money to make a new start, so I sent her a check. She didn’t cash it right away, but about a month later she did. That told me she needed the funds, so I just kept sending the checks. And she kept cashing them.”

“For thirty-seven years?”

“That’s right.”

“Dr. Cage, why would you send money for that long, if you did not know that Viola had borne a child by you?”

“I knew she wouldn’t have cashed those checks unless she needed the money badly. Viola had too much pride to take charity. I also felt responsible for the fact that she’d had to leave town. I felt guilty. Giving her financial help was the very least I could do.”

“I see. All right. Let’s return to the night of Viola’s death. After she told you that you had fathered her son, what happened?”

“The discussion became very emotional, as you might imagine. I couldn’t believe she had withheld that from me all those years. But I soon realized she’d done it to protect me and my family. She felt responsible for our affair, and while she knew I shared that guilt, Viola didn’t believe my wife and children should suffer because of our sin. Those are her words.”

Again Quentin pauses to let this sink into the minds of the jury. “What happened next?”

“Viola asked me to make her a promise.”

“What promise?”

“That after her death, I would make sure that our son was provided for in the future. At first I thought she meant that I should give him a large sum of money, but she didn’t want that.”

“Why not?”

“Viola believed that Lincoln had been twisted in a moral sense by his stepfather. Also by her negligence, due to her drinking. She felt he wasn’t yet mature enough to handle a large amount of money. She suggested that I might establish a trust of some sort for him.”

“Did you agree to do that?”