I was still smiling when Ethan appeared in the kitchen doorway at eight thirty in his school
uniform, assessed my face with his usual efficiency, and said: “You’re in a good mood.”
“I’m in a normal mood,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment with the expression of a child who has been reading his
mother for nine years and is not even slightly fooled. “You’re in a good mood,” he said
again, with the calm certainty of someone filing a fact. He accepted his toast and went
to school without further comment, which was its own kind of mercy because I did not
particularly want to explain the courthouse corridor photograph to an eight-year-old before
nine in the morning.
The Crestfield statement landed at ten forty-seven.
I was at my desk in the hotel suite when Daniel sent it through wi
