She smiled, though her mouth trembled. “All I know for sure now is what Trey did. That’s what he has to fix. What do you tell Cara? Same as Trey and I tell our girls. If you do a bad thing, you don’t say, ‘Oh, but she did something worse.’ You aren’t in control of that. You aren’t responsible for that. If you do it, it’s yours. You apologize. You make amends. Maybe if Trey steps up, Lexie will realize she has to take responsibility, too. For whatever her part was in her mother’s plan. It’s the only way to fix this.”

By “fix this,” Marshall understood, Bree meant much more than the moment of Trey’s history that the old Nikon camera had captured. She meant her marriage. She meant the world.

The world that he knew was huge and broken in a million unfixable ways, but in spite of all that had happened in the last few days, she still saw brightness, found a way to hope. He loved that she was going to try. It was . . . the word was “valiant.” She was going to grab a lance and run at a windmill. Fine. But he was going to have her back. In case the windmill was a monster after all.

He sorted the pictures again, leaving one copy of each on the desk. The rest he packed up with the letter in the envelope; he could not risk Trey destroying them. If this did go sour, get ugly, the other copies and the letter were the only decent card they had. The letter especially. It linked Trey to the photos.

“I’ll keep these,” he said. “Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” she said, but it was a distracted question. She was pacing, thinking, hoping, her essential optimism shining. She’d always been like this, the deliberate opposite of her mother. Shelly Ann saw danger in every dark spot. Bree saw restful shade. Marshall thought that they were both wrong to a degree. But if he was being honest, he believed that Bree was wronger.

Or maybe he was cynical. He could not have her faith in Trey. But if it were Betsy? Impossible to imagine Betsy in this position. But if it were? Yes. He’d have faith that his wife, the mother of his child, would do what was right. Even if it was hard.

Bree was set on this path, and if she was correct, if people were essentially good and love could win and hope was blah-blah-blah, she might save her marriage. Hell, she might save her husband. She might be the making of him. Marshall had to hope that it could happen, for her sake. For the sake of her kids.

He said the only thing he could say and still be completely honest with her.

“I’m right here if you need me.”

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