What Happened That Night

Brandy nodded. “Do you know her?”

“Of course, I know her. She was your father’s high school girlfriend. She moved into his house as soon as Cheryl died.”

“What?” All the color drained from Brandy’s face. “Dottie was my father’s high school girlfriend?”

I nodded. “At one point, the prosecutor thought she might’ve been one of your father’s motives for killing your mother.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“No, I imagine not. Once you learned why your father was in prison, you never wanted to know any more about what happened.” I gestured at the videotapes. “You said Dottie sent these movies to you? How did she even find you?”

Guilt flooded Brandy’s face. “I met her while you were at the parole board meeting.”

Hearing that knocked the wind out of me. “How? Did she accost you at the cafe? Is that why you left?”

“No. I drove to the house.”

“The house?”

“The house where I lived with my parents. I just wanted to drive by it, but then we saw Dottie, and she invited us inside.”

“Us? Lia went with you?”

“Yes. And, Aunt Ruthie... I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

She gestured at the videos. “I’ve been watching these home movies and reading books about wrongful conviction, prosecutorial misconduct, and erroneous eyewitness testimony. I... I don’t think my father did it. I don’t think he killed my mother.”

My jaw hit the floor. She wasn’t serious, was she?

“I think my father is innocent.”

“Innocent?” The word tasted like acid in my mouth. “He’s not innocent.”

“I know this must be hard for you to hear—”

“I was there.” My jaw ached, but I pushed past the pain. “I saw Eddie in the kitchen that night. He spoke to me. He hit me and—”

“What about the tattoo?”

“The tattoo?”

Brandy grabbed a stack of papers from the nightstand and rifled through them until she found the page she wanted. “This is the transcript from the trial. The defense stated that you first described the man you saw as tall with a bird tattoo on his left arm. Then at the trial, you said the tattoo actually looked more like an airplane.”

I bristled. “When he raised his arm to hit me, it happened so fast I thought I saw a bird on his arm. Later, when I saw a picture of his airplane tattoo, I knew that was it.”

“You also said the perpetrator was tall, but for a man, my father is relatively short.”

“He was taller than me. I was comparing him to me, not to all the other men in the world.”

“There are other inconsistencies,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter. You weren’t there. You didn’t see him.”

“It does matter.”

I shook my head, unable to believe what she was saying. “On the stand, I told the truth.”