Chapter 20: Accessory

The prosecutor's office had a coffee maker that smelled burned and a window onto a parking structure.

Dad sat in the chair across from the desk with his hat on his knee.

I took the chair next to him and didn't ask if anyone minded.

"Mr. Moynihan," the prosecutor said. "I want to be plain. What you've told us puts you at risk."

"I know."

"You worked out the swap within a month, from the newspaper. You told no one for twenty-two years."

"That's right."

"A jury could call that helping."

"A jury could be right," said Dad.

The prosecutor looked at me.

"Ms. Moynihan, you can wait outside. This could get unpleasant."

"I'm his daughter."

"You're also the victim in this case."

"I'm both," I said. "I'll stay."

He sighed through his nose, and then he turned a legal pad around.

"Start from the morning you came to the hospital."

Dad told it flat and slow, without a single thing to make himself look better.

He added only one detail I hadn't heard.

Lorna had made him sign the order for the Mount Calvary stone himself, so his name would be the one on the paper.

The prosecutor wrote that down and underlined it.

Then he tapped his pen against the pad.

"You mailed the letter to the Hartwell Group yourself."

"Yes."

"Why now?"

"Because Cora turned twenty-two last month. I thought, someday she'll have a baby of her own, and she'll know what I did."

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