Opal nodded slowly.
Then she pushed back her chair and stood up, holding on to the edge of the table. She walked out of the kitchen with her cane. I heard her open a drawer in the front hall.
When she came back, she was holding a small piece of paper, folded in half. She put it down on the
table in front of me.
I unfolded it.
There was a name and a phone number, written in that same careful blue cursive.
Russell Keane.
“He’s a forensic financial investigator,” Opal said. “He helped me once. When I had trouble with my ex-husband.”
“Your ex-husband? I thought you were a widow.”
“I’m both,” she said. “I divorced the first one and buried the second one. The first one was named Leonard, and he hid sixty thousand dollars from me in our divorce. Russell found every penny of it. In
about two weeks.” She sat back down. “He doesn’t work miracles, Rebecca. But he knows how to find lies that are hidden in numbers.”
I stared at the name on that piece of paper.
For the first time since that jury foreman stood up, I felt something I’d almost forgotten about.
It wasn’t hope. Not exactly. It was smaller than hope. It was more like the idea of hope. Like seeing a
light on in a house far away when you’re lost in the dark.
“I can’t pay him,” I said. “I have six hundred dollars a week, and I owe you for the soup.”
“Talk to him first,” Opal said. “Then worry about paying him.”
Then she reached into the pocket of her navy dress and took out her cell phone.
“There’s something else you need to know,” she said. “I was going to wait and see what you told me
