Beneath the author photo is a montage of smaller shots, like a family album: me as a lanky kid with Dad’s arm around my shoulders, printed in a Father’s Day issue in 1968; as a high school baseball player; as the flag runner in the annual Confederate pageant; my Ole Miss graduation photo. I quickly scan the columns, recognizing most of what I said yesterday, laid out in surprisingly faithful prose.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Have you been in Houston so long you’ve forgotten how things are here? Bill Humphreys said you set back thirty years of good race relations.”

“I didn’t say anything you haven’t said a hundred times in our kitchen.”

“The newspaper isn’t our kitchen!”

“Come on, Dad. This is nothing.”

He shakes his head in amazement. “Turn the page, hotshot. You’ll see something.”

When I turn the page, my breath catches in my throat.

The banner headline reads: 30 YEARS LATER “RACIST COWARDS” STILL WALK STREETS. My stomach flips over. Underneath the headline is a photo of a scorched Ford Fairlane with a blackened corpse seated behind the wheel. That picture never ran in the Natchez Examiner in 1968. Caitlin Masters must have dug up an old crime-scene photo somewhere.

“Jesus,” I whisper.

“Harvey Byrd at the Chamber of Commerce thinks you may have single-handedly sabotaged the chemical-plant deal.”

“Let me read the thing, okay?”

Dad plants himself in the corner, his arms folded. The story opens like a true-crime novel.