As the years passed, no similar incident occurred, yet this one stayed with me. Something about that night opened the door to a darkness that less fortunate children lived with every day and night: the horror of abandonment. And now … thirty-seven years later, the terror of that night has returned with paralyzing intensity. Though all the years since have reinforced the belief that my father is the paragon of virtue everyone believes he is, my certainty about that deception remains clear. Why did he lie that night? Where had he been?

“I was eight,” I murmur, rubbing my arms to stay warm. “That means it was 1968. Spring or summer of sixty-eight.”

The year Viola Turner left Natchez, I realize. What month did she leave? April? Yes … soon after Martin Luther King was killed.

My mind returns to the friend who broke his legs on the motorcycle. He lives on the West Coast now; I haven’t seen him for years. Surely he would remember when he was hurt, and how long he was in the hospital. That accident changed his life. But do I really need to call him? One thing I remember for sure: his stay in the hospital caused him to miss weeks of school. So it wasn’t summertime. Nor was it cold outside, while I waited for my dad. It had to be … spring. The spring of 1968.

“Jesus,” I whisper, realizing what this might mean.

Last night Dad denied the possibility that he could be Lincoln Turner’s father. I took this denial as an assertion that he’d never slept with Viola. But was it? He also told me that his only connection to Brody Royal had been incidental, and that the photo of them together had been a fluke.

“What if he was lying?” I murmur. “And not just about Viola, but all of it? About Royal, Leland Robb … all of it?”

The wind snatches away my words, but not before they open a chasm at my feet. I feel that if I take one step forward, I’ll tumble into a blackness that has no bottom. What now? Should I track down my father and try to shake the truth out of him? What would be the point? If he lied last night, he’ll only lie again today. I could question my mother, but that would only rip open a chasm at her feet, and force her to ponder the possibility that her life isn’t what she’s always believed it to be. I can hardly imagine a more painful or pointless course of action.