Chapter 21: Six Months

Six months went by.

Kenneth confessed inside a month, because he wanted the boy's file kept open.

He named the third man, and the money, and the shell company, and the wedding.

He did not name Lillian.

The district attorney named her anyway.

The newspaper that had printed *Wife Refuses to Save Dying Boy* printed a correction on page one, above the fold, in letters as big as the lie.

I framed it, and then I took it off the wall and used it to line a drawer.

The women from the luncheon sent letters.

I read all of them.

I answered three.

I put the dividends from my thirty percent of Stockwell Holdings into a fund with my own name on it, and I wrote the first check myself.

*For the women nobody believed.*

By the end of the week it had a waiting list.

I visited Lillian once.

They put us on either side of a glass wall, and she picked up the phone with both hands.

She was thinner.

Her hair was pulled back, and without the curls she looked like the nine-year-old who used to follow me through my mother's garden.

"Suzie."

"Lillian."

"I didn't know about the men. I'll say it until I die. I knew he had a plan to get Preston free. I knew he had money. I told myself it was lawyers."

"And the baby?"

She went white.

"You knew," I said. "You knew he wanted my child. You sat at my table. You held my hand."

"I thought..." Her voice broke. "I thought you'd say yes. I thought if I asked you, you'd say yes, like you always did."

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