Or I’d killed myself. Because, really, I did this to myself. My mother’s dead. I’m an only child. My husband works nights. They were stupid lies, easily exposed. If only those hadn’t been the cops’ first questions out of the box. I wasn’t ready for them yet, penned up in that little room off the lobby with the gun blast still bouncing around inside my skull. Denying my family was simply a reflex, as involuntary as breathing. I hadn’t been thinking like a suspect yet. I hadn’t foreseen the land mines awaiting me.

Then there were my job-hunting lies. The Innocence Project. The software program. Harmless embellishments invented solely to get through an interview, but they’d backfired on me, too. Now my credibility was shot. The cops would never believe what really happened.

NO, MY FAMILY did this to me. They’d been dragging me down all my life, and here they were, doing it again. Barb and her big mouth. Roger and his stupid gun-making business. (You tell me, Miss Fancy-Pants Lawyer, Barb had said during my idiotic Christmas Day call. How come it’s legal to buy the kits and legal to make the guns but not legal to sell them? What about the Second Amendment? Huh? Sure, Mom, I’d answered. The Constitution definitely guarantees the right to keep and sell arms.)

I remembered Mrs. Casco driving me home after debate practice one day when I was about thirteen, and there they were—Barb and Roger and Tom, all of them splayed on the front stoop with beer cans in their hands, my brothers shirtless and paunchy and tattooed, my mother with her trademark orange smear of lipstick and a kaleidoscope of changing hair color. I froze in the passenger seat as tears of shame flooded my eyes. Forget them, Mrs. Casco had said. They’re nothing to you. Less than nothing. In no time you’ll be far from here, living your own life your own way, and it’ll be like they never existed.

It worked for a time. For a long time. Certainly David never doubted I was all alone in the world. It would have worked still if they hadn’t found my birth certificate or tracked down Barb through my phone. Once they found her, it was all over. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut about anything.

But there was no point in blaming this on my family. Seeking revenge against them would be as pointless as suing a homeless person. It would gain me nothing.

I had a far better target for my revenge: J. Ingram Barrett, Jr. He was the one who really did this to me, and if I figured out how to bring him down, it could gain me everything.

I had a lot of nights ahead to work out how I’d do it.

I scrubbed away my tears. Enough of that. I had to be a warrior, not a princess. A princess would spend this time wallowing in self-pity, but a warrior would be planning her attack. Or, in my case, my defense. Vengeance would come later, after exoneration.