“I’ll help you, then,” her father said, rolling up his sleeves.

“Dad.” She met his eyes. “Right now, I just want to be alone.”

“Ah, Addie.” Roy moved forward, hugging her tightly, until the wire brush dropped from her hand and her sob curled into his chest like a kitten’s mewing.

“I’m not going to be able to say good-bye,” Addie whispered. “Visiting hours aren’t until next Wednesday. And by then . . . by then, he could be in the prison in Concord.”

“Then you’ll go visit in Concord. I’ll drive you every day after work, if I have to.”

Addie offered him a weak smile. “On what, Dad? The lawn mower?” She squeezed his hand. “Maybe I will come up for iced tea, all right? Just give me a while to sort things out in my head.”

She felt her father’s eyes on her as she took a jug of bleach from a shelf and began to wash down the dishwashing table and stainless sinks. Her mother used to say that a little bleach could go a long way toward making the shabbiest circumstances shine.

Her mother had not been in love with Jack St. Bride.

Once Roy went upstairs, Addie attacked the kitchen. She rubbed down the sneeze guard of the cold table and wiped clean its cool innards. She scraped burned patches from the base of the oven. She scrubbed and washed until her knuckles bled within her rubber gloves, and she had to wrap her hands in a damp dishcloth, just to ease the pain.

She was working with such a frenzy, she never heard the front door of the diner open. “I hope you’re paying yourself well,” Charlie said.

Addie jumped a foot, slamming her head against the base of the warming table. “Oh!”

“Jeez, Addie, are you all right?” Charlie rushed forward to help her, but the moment he was within the range of being able to touch, they both froze. Addie backed off, her hand to her forehead.

“Fine. That was just stupid of me.” She hugged her arms to her chest. “Is this about Jack?”

Charlie shook his head. “Is there . . . could we sit down for a second?”

Nodding slowly, Addie followed him into the front room of the diner. They slid across from each other in a booth. The barrier of a table between them helped, and being away from the bleach fumes cleared her head. But Charlie showed no signs of speaking. “How is Meg?” Addie asked after a moment.

“All right. Thanks for asking.” Charlie tapped his fingertips on the table. “After all that’s been said in that courtroom, I don’t know what’s going to come of her, really.”

“Take it one day at a time.” Addie looked at the clock. Swallowed.

“Addie,” Charlie said, “I owe you an apology.”

Her eyes reluctantly met his. “Why?”

“I’ve been listening to the testimony. And I’ve been helping the prosecution for weeks. And it’s made me . . . it’s made it all come back clearer than ever. God, I’m doing a shitty job of this . . .” Charlie rubbed his hand over his face. “I thought I’d live in Miami, get a job on the force, and just forget Salem Falls. Then Chief Rudlow invited me back north, and I told myself enough time had passed to just wipe away the memory. After nearly a decade, I assumed that if I didn’t think about it, no one else would, either.” He hunched over the table, as if drawing strength from within. “But you’ve thought about, every day, haven’t you?”

Addie closed her eyes, then nodded.

“I knew what was coming that afternoon under the bleachers, when Amos called you over. I was drunk, sure, but I knew what I was doing. And for reasons I can’t even stand to think of, I went along with it . . . and then followed the others, when they acted like it hadn’t happened at all.” Charlie lowered his gaze. “Damn, Addie, how do you tell someone you’re sorry you ruined their life?”

It took Addie a long time to speak. “You didn’t ruin my life, Charlie. You raped me. There’s a difference: One, I couldn’t keep from happening . . . but the other, I could. I did.” She thought of Chloe, of Jack. “The more you get past pain, the more it goes from coal to diamond.”

Charlie’s eyes were red-rimmed, stricken. “I’m not going to ask you to forgive me, and I know I can’t ask you to forget. But I want you to know, for whatever it’s worth, that I don’t forgive myself . . . and I’ll never forget, either.”

“Thank you,” Addie whispered, “for that.”

She heard the door jingle closed behind him and she sat at the booth with her legs completely limp, waiting for her heart to stop beating triple-time. After all these years, who would have expected validation? After all these years, who would have expected that simply hearing the words made her feel like starting over?

She was jolted out of her reverie by the sound of the door opening again. Charlie must have forgotten something. But before she could turn around, Addie heard the voice of a young woman, the thud of a suitcase being dropped on the floor. “They said I’d find you here.”

And suddenly Addie was face to face with Catherine Marsh.

July 5, 2000

Carroll County Courthouse

The air in the courtroom was thick the next morning, so heavy with anticipation it beaded on the foreheads of the reporters and misted the lenses of the camera crews. Judge Justice strode to the bench with the air of a magistrate whose mind is already turned toward her next case. “I believe we’re starting the day with closing arguments,” she said. “Mr. McAfee, are you ready to begin?”

Jordan stood. “Actually, Your Honor, I need to reopen my case.”

A moment later, he and Houlihan were standing at the bench. “I have another witness,” Jordan explained. “An unexpected one, whose testimony is crucial to the defense.”

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me why you didn’t know about her before?” the judge asked. “Does the state know this witness and what they’re going to testify to?”

“No, I don’t,” Matt said, irritated. “The defense already rested. You didn’t see me dancing a parade of new witnesses in front of the court after the prosecution finished.”

“Judge,” Jordan explained, “it’s the victim from my client’s previous conviction. She’s recanting.”

“Which is totally irrelevant. It’s too late,” Matt insisted.

The judge stared at each lawyer in turn, then addressed the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, you may recall that yesterday the defense rested. However, the court is going to allow Mr. McAfee to reopen his case to call one final witness.”

Jordan smoothed down his tie and glanced toward the rear of the courtroom. “The defense calls Catherine Marsh.”

She was small and shaken, and Jordan had his doubts about whether she would even make it to the stand without assistance. But at the steps, Catherine rallied, repeating the words to swear herself in in a true, ringing voice.

“How old are you, Ms. Marsh?”

“I’m sixteen.”

Jordan glanced at his client. “Do you know Jack St. Bride?”

It was the first chance Catherine had to see her former teacher. She met Jack’s eyes, and a story hung between them, one torn into a spotty snowflake pattern by contrition. “Yes, I do,” she murmured.

“How?”

Catherine took a deep breath. “I’m the one he was convicted of sexually assaulting last year.”

A gasp rolled through the courtroom like a tide. “Why are you here today, Ms. Marsh?”

“Because.” Catherine looked at her knotted hands. “I let it happen the first time, and I’m not going to be responsible for letting it happen a second time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jack St. Bride never sexually assaulted me. He never touched me inappropriately. He never did anything wrong at all. He was the best teacher I ever had and . . . and maybe I thought of him that way and wished he would be attracted to me . . . but it never happened.”

“Why did you let him get convicted, then?” Jordan asked.

A single tear rolled down Catherine’s cheek as she took a deep breath. “Coach believed in me and was kind to me. When I had a boyfriend and wanted to have sex for the first time, Coach took me to a clinic to get birth control pills. He didn’t want to, but he did it, because it was so important to me. And when the same guy broke up with me, all I could think was that I wished he’d been more like Coach-more mature, more into me, more . . . Jack.” She looked at the jury. “I started to write about him. . . about us . . . in my diary. I made it up, the way I wanted it to be. And when my father found my birth control pills and read my diary-God, for a moment, I just wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe what my father believed . . . that I was someone Coach was attracted to, instead of just the other way around.