“I want to be honest with you, Rebecca,” he said. “I’m not going to promise you anything.”
“Okay.”
“I need to review the case file. All of it. And you need to understand something. A final conviction doesn’t just disappear because somebody finds a few inconsistencies. The courts don’t work that way. But if there’s genuinely new evidence, evidence that wasn’t available at your trial, then an attorney can evaluate whether there’s a way to present it.”
“That’s all I want,” I said. “Someone to look.”
He nodded.
“Then bring me what you have,” he said.
The next day, I took the bus to the bank where I’d hidden my safe deposit box four years ago. My hands were shaking when I signed the card. I was terrified it would be gone, or empty, or that they’d
tell me it had been closed for unpaid fees.
