“No. You just talked about how wonderful it would be if we were both there. What I can’t believe is that you let your parents think I had gotten you pregnant. You did, didn’t you? That’s the root of all the pain that came after.”

She takes a deep breath and sighs. “I suppose I did.”

“Suppose, nothing. You didn’t have the guts to admit you teased Ray Presley into raping you, but you didn’t mind letting me take the blame for knocking you up.”

“Penn, you don’t understand. When Ray took me home that night, he threatened me. He said that if I told my father what had happened, he’d kill my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“He knew I wouldn’t care about myself. Ray said my father might kill him for hurting me, but he’d thank him for killing my mother. And on some level . . . I felt like he might be right. Daddy was such a bastard to Mother back then.”

A wave of shame rolls through me, shame for thinking Livy was so selfish and shallow that she would let my family pay for something that was someone else’s fault without any excuse. But the shame passes quickly. Livy is twisting the truth even now.

“You’re lying. I don’t mean about the threat. I’m sure Presley threatened you. But you’ve always cared about yourself. More than anything else. And I don’t think you would have bought Ray’s threat, not for long. He was scared shitless of your father. He still is, in some ways. And when Leo decided to go after my father out of revenge, you could have spoken up. You could have said, Daddy, it wasn’t Penn. But you didn’t. You knew why he took that suit, and you never said a damn word to change his mind.”

“It was too late by then. I was at Virginia and—”

“I flew up there to see you! And you said nothing. You’re gutless, Livy. I never knew that about you until now.”

“I suppose I am. About the big things.”

“Just like your father. He wanted a man dead, but he didn’t have the balls to do it himself. He was district attorney, and he arranged to have an innocent man killed for profit.”

“That is such bullshit.”

“You think so? You’ll find out different tomorrow. Your father and Ray Presley set up one of the most heinous murders I’ve ever come across, and J. Edgar Hoover covered it up to keep your grandfather happy. To keep them pulling for Nixon in the sixty-eight election.”

“What are you babbling about?”

“Never mind.”

Her face has taken on a strange cast. “I met him once, you know. Hoover. When I was a little girl. Up in Jackson with my father.”

“Oh, they were big buddies. And the root of their friendship was the murder of Del Payton.”