“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know . . . at first.”

“When did you know?” I asked.

She looked at her son, reached a hand up and touched his cheek. Jeremy was too stunned to pull back.

“I heard them talking,” she said. “Bob and Galen. Soon after the accident. I . . . I confronted them. I . . . I was going to do something, but . . . everything was too far along.”

Jeremy whispered, “How . . . how could . . .”

“I think I know how,” I said. “What did they tell you, Gloria? That if you came forward at that point, they’d go to jail. Galen and Bob. That deal worth millions would die. You’d be worthless. They told you they had a strategy to get Jeremy off, or at least make it so he served very little time in prison. Was it something like that?”

Tears were running down her cheeks. There was a nod. “If it hadn’t worked,” she said weakly, “I told them, that if they sent Jeremy to jail, then I’d have to say . . . I’d have to say something . . .”

“You let them do this to me,” Jeremy said.

“But I let them humiliate me,” she told him. “I let them make a laughing stock of me, because I love you. I was willing to do anything to save you. I didn’t care. I did it for you. ”

“You were willing to do anything but tell the truth,” he said, his voice weak, crumbling.

“Jeremy,” I said. “We should get you out of here.”

“Bob was your ticket,” Jeremy whispered. “A ticket to a better life. More money, all the things you wanted.”

“I . . . I just need to explain it to you better,” Gloria said. “I told you, things were so far along. It was . . . it was a case of the lesser evil.”

We seemed to have an abundant supply of that at the moment.

A shout from the front of the house. “Weaver!”

It was Duckworth.

“Back here!” I called.

He was in the kitchen in three seconds, one uniformed officer trailing him. He saw Bob on the floor and looked angrily at me. “You were supposed to wait.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Duckworth pushed me aside, straddled Bob and told him to lie face down and put his hands behind his back. “I’m placing you under arrest, Mr. Butler,” he said. He cinched some plastic cuffs onto the man’s wrists and told him to get up. Awkwardly, Bob got to his knees first, then stood.

He allowed himself to be walked out of the kitchen. He kept his head bowed, avoiding eye contact with any of us on the way out.

The kitchen was very silent again.

“You have to understand,” Gloria said pleadingly. She reached out to touch Jeremy’s arm, and he recoiled as though she were a poisonous snake.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, more to himself than any of us.