As the screen trips over to my screen saver, my mind turns to Quentin Avery. Among trial lawyers, Quentin is known as “Preacher” for his awe-inspiring ability to sway juries. But even in dry history books, his name figures prominently in some chapters. During the 1960s and ’70s, Quentin argued four cases before the United States Supreme Court—one a landmark civil rights case—and won them all. He became a hero to many, and his name was mentioned in the same sentences as Thurgood Marshall and James Nabrit. But by the mid-1980s, the young firebrand had turned his mind to lucre rather than to justice, taking on high-profile (and very profitable) drug cases. In the 1990s he moved on to personal injury cases, two of which made him genuinely wealthy. Throughout those years, Quentin did enough pro bono work that the people who mattered maintained their respect for him, but the image of a black knight on a shining steed had been forever tarnished, and his name was never again spoken with the same reverence as those of the men with whom he’d rubbed shoulders during the most dangerous years of the movement.

“Mayor?” Rose says over my intercom. “I haven’t been able to reach Mr. Avery, but I have his wife on the phone.”

“Thank you, Rose. I’ll pick up.”

Though in his seventies, Quentin is married to an attorney in her early forties, a woman very protective of her husband. When Quentin and I worked a case together two years ago, it took Doris Avery some time to warm up to me. I like to think that she and I ended up in a state of mutual respect, but from what Dad told me about Quentin’s health, Doris has probably been under immense strain in recent months.

“Doris, this is Penn.”

“Hello,” says the weary alto voice I remember.

“Thank you for taking my call. I know things have been difficult for Quentin lately, and I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency.”

“Emergency is a relative term. I know why you’re calling. A friend from Natchez told me Tom was arrested this morning, and why.”

“Does Quentin know?”

“No. He’s a sick man, Penn. Very sick. I will tell him after he wakes up, but only because he’ll be angry if he finds out later that I kept it from him.”

“Are you guys in D.C.?”

“No, Jefferson County. Your father has actually been treating Quentin, despite his heart attack.”

Yet another fact Dad has kept from me, and possibly from my mother as well.