Chapter 23: The Reckoning

The sheriff's deputies cuffed my brother in the middle of the gravel, with thirteen million people watching.

Colson did not fight.

He held his wrists out in front of him, and the cuffs closed.

At the last moment he turned his head.

"Sue," he said.

I waited.

"Tell them I didn't mean it."

"I can't," I said. "I'd be lying, and I've stopped doing that for you."

His face crumpled, and for the first time I saw the boy from the video.

Then the deputy took his arm, and they walked him down the ridge to the truck.

The crowd parted without a sound.

I stood there a long time after the doors shut.

I had waited two lives to feel something when he left.

What I felt was tired, and clean.

"Susanna."

My father stood at my elbow, with his hat in his hands.

I had not seen him close since the helicopter pad.

He had aged ten years in a week, and his hands trembled on the brim.

"I was wrong," he said. "Not about your brother. About you."

"About what, exactly?"

"I said you were out of the family. I cut your allowance and your room."

He swallowed.

"I froze the trust set aside for our daughter. It's yours, Susanna."

He turned the hat in his hands.

"The company shares, the house, the accounts. I can have the papers drawn by tonight."

I looked at him.

He was fifty-nine, and he had paid to keep a dead girl quiet.

Now he held out his hat to me, with both hands.

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