Melba looked grateful for the lie. After a moment, she rose from the stool, and once he’d followed suit, she took him into her arms and hugged him, taking care not to put pressure on his wounded shoulder. At first the embrace felt awkward and stiff, but then Tom felt something let go in the nurse’s frame, and it was as though they’d been married for thirty years. In a way, he supposed, they had—just as he and Esther Ford had, and of course Viola, though their relationship had crossed into something far more intimate.

“Don’t you sit here studyin’ ’bout Viola and that boy of hers,” Melba said in his ear. “You don’t know for sure he’s yours. And even if he is, you never knew about him. Viola made that choice. And if that boy hates you now, well … if you let him know you, he’ll come around.”

“He’s not a boy anymore.”

Melba drew far enough back to look into his eyes. “Yes, he is. Down deep, he is. And a black boy is a hard thing to be, especially without a daddy. Take it from me.”

“I believe you, Mel.”

The nurse hugged him tight again. “I feel like I’m never going to see you again.”

“You will. I promise.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “I feel it. And I want to say something to you.”

“What?”

She finally released him and stepped back, but she kept hold of his arthritic hands. “Don’t give up. Please. Don’t let them take you without a fight. Nobody’s perfect. Not even you. You deserve all the time you’ve got left.”

Tom felt his eyes getting wet. “Thank you, Mel. You go now.”

“I will. But I’m only going because I know you’re not alone here.”

As his nurse turned and walked to the door, Tom felt the familiar and terrible weight he had borne all his life, the faith of simple people who had believed too much in him.

CHAPTER 88

AS SOON AS Caitlin got back to the Examiner building, she’d found herself in the eye of a hurricane. Not only was her full staff working frantically to finish the stories they planned to run on various threads of Henry Sexton’s murder investigations, but the editors of her father’s satellite papers were screaming for the stories they’d been promised by a deadline that had passed an hour ago. After passing a taped copy of her phone recording to Penn, Caitlin had deflected her staff by issuing a quick barrage of orders, then told Jamie to call his counterparts at the satellites and tell them thirty minutes of overtime had been authorized. It was a lie, but one she was banking no one would test by waking her father in Charlotte. As everyone left to implement her instructions, she’d retreated to her private office and locked the door.