Michael listed cities.
Pittsburgh.
Erie.
A place outside Harrisburg.
Cleveland.
A suburb whose name Lily had never heard.
Then Columbus.
Some dates had gaps.
Michael explained that certain addresses could not be written because they belonged to other people’s protected information.
Lily accepted that.
What she did not accept was vagueness about Bear.
“When did you stop talking?”
Michael looked at Bear.
Bear leaned back.
“Your assignment really this detailed?”
“Yes.”
Rachel smiled.
“Answer her.”
Michael said, “About fourteen years ago.”
“Why?”
Bear looked toward Rachel for rescue.
None came.
Because apparently honesty was everyone’s hobby now.
“We had a fight.”
Lily waited.
Bear continued.
“About money.”
“That’s stupid.”
Michael nodded.
“Yes.”
Bear said, “We were younger.”
“You were adults.”
Everyone laughed except the brothers.
Lily had them.
She knew it.
“You wasted fourteen years over money?”
Bear scratched his beard.
“Technically six of those years I thought he was dead.”
Michael muttered, “That does not improve the story.”
Lily wrote something on her timeline.
Bear leaned over.
“What did you write?”
She covered it.
“Private.”
“That is about me.”
“Still private.”
He reached.
She moved the paper.
Rachel pointed a fork at Bear.
“Leave her alone.”
Bear sat back.
Later, after Lily went upstairs, Michael found the project lying on the table.
He looked.
Under one line she had written:
UNCLE BEAR + DAD STOPPED TALKING BECAUSE ADULTS CAN BE DUMB.
Michael started laughing.
Bear read it.
“Teacher’s going to love us.”
Rachel took a photograph.
“For evidence.”
Bear pointed at her.
“You’ve become dangerous.”
“I learned from Lily.”
The trial began in January.
Bear hated the courthouse immediately.
Security wanted his belt off.
Then boots.
Then metal from his vest set off the detector anyway.
The deputy at the scanner stared at the Iron Lantern patch.
Bear stared back.
The deputy said, “Motorcycle club?”
“Book club.”
The deputy blinked.
Bear continued.
“We discuss nineteenth-century poetry.”
Dave, standing behind him, nearly choked.
Rachel covered her mouth.
Michael said, “Please stop.”
The deputy waved them through.
Bear considered it a victory.
The courtroom was smaller than he expected.
No television drama scale.
No dramatic lighting.
Wood benches.
Beige walls.
Fluorescent ceiling panels.
A judge with reading glasses.
Twelve jurors who looked like people Bear might pass at a grocery store.
Richard Vale sat at the defense table.
Bear had seen photographs.
Seeing him in person was different.
Vale looked ordinary.
That bothered Bear.
Gray suit.
Silver hair.
Thin glasses.
Nothing about him suggested six years of stolen family history.
Maybe evil was too theatrical a word.
Vale looked like administration.
Forms.
Keys.
Passwords.
A man who learned where systems were weak and inserted himself there.
Michael testified on the fourth day.
Bear was not allowed inside before his own testimony because witnesses had been sequestered.