LITMIR.BIZ

      ERIN TIPTOED INTO her dark apartment as if she were a kid sneaking in past curfew. And just like when she was a kid, she got caught. A lamp snapped on and flooded the living room with light.

      Was this actually her apartment? Someone had tidied up. Books had been put back on the built-in cherry-wood shelves. Nothing but polish covered the hardwood floor. Even the cushions were on the couch. If not for having just unlocked the door, she would have suspected she’d stumbled into the wrong place.

      “You’re late,” Kathryn Powell pointed out from where she sat primly, with her ankles crossed, on the sofa. Had her mother been sleeping like that or just sitting in the dark, waiting for her?

      Erin blinked against the glare of the halogen bulb of the floor lamp. “I’m sorry.”

      She should have called, but she hadn’t planned to go anywhere after class. Once she’d arrived at the Lighthouse, she hadn’t dared to call, what with the rowdy background noise. Her mother would have gotten the wrong idea. She tended to think the worst of her children.

      Kathryn sniffed as if doubting Erin’s sincerity, and patted her short brown hair, not a single strand of which was displaced. “Your father is upset that I’m not home yet. He doesn’t want me making that long drive alone at this hour.”

      Her parents lived about seventy miles southeast of Lakewood, in the austere Tudor home where Erin and her older brother, Mitchell, had grown up, in East Grand Rapids. Her brother had moved to Lakewood for college, and then, after dropping out, had stayed on because he’d liked being close to the water.

      “You can stay over,” Erin offered, although her shoulders tensed at the thought of more quality time with Mom. Despite her mother’s best efforts, she would never be able to tidy up Erin’s life.

      Kathryn shook her head. “I didn’t bring any of my things with me. I didn’t think your class was supposed to go so late.”

      “It wasn’t.” It hadn’t. “Or I wouldn’t have signed up. You can stay, Mom. You can borrow something of mine.”

      “No, I need to get home to your father.”

      Mitchell had resented their mother’s devotion to Erin’s dad, his stepfather. That devotion used to inspire Erin to want that kind of love for herself someday, but she’d given up on her dream of love for her dream of justice. She had to clear Mitchell’s name and get his conviction overturned.

      Erin passed through the neat living room to the hall, traveling a few steps to lean against the doorjamb of a bedroom. A night-light with a clown’s face illuminated a jumble of blocks and cars littering the racetrack rug. She ignored the clutter and focused on the bed and the small body curled into a ball under the covers.

      “How was he?” she asked her mother, who had followed her—despite her desire to get home to her husband.

      Kathryn sighed. “Hyperactive. And much too dependent on you.”

      Guilt surpassed the defensiveness her mother usually inspired in her, and Erin admitted, “Maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for the course.”

      Kathryn stepped closer and sniffed her hair. “You smell like you’ve been in a bar instead of a classroom.”

      Erin shook her head. “Restaurant. It was easier to do interviews there than at the police department.” Or it would have been if she’d actually managed to speak to anyone without Sergeant Terlecki’s interference.

      “You’re wasting your time,” her mother claimed. “If what you’re really looking for is some evidence to clear your brother, you’re not going to find anything.”

      “Mom, I have to help him.” She would never be able to turn her back on her half brother the way her parents had. “Not just for Mitchell but for Jason, too. He can’t keep losing people he loves.”

      That was why her nephew had become so attached to Erin—he was afraid she would leave him, as his father had four years ago and then his mother just last year. Mitchell’s girlfriend had found someone else, someone who didn’t want to raise another man’s child. So except for Erin’s parents, who tended to be more disapproving than affectionate, Erin was all the little boy had now.

      “If you want to help your brother,” Kathryn advised, “then get him to admit the truth.”

      “He’s not the one lying.” Kent Terlecki was. He had to be, or else her brother was one of those many people of whom Kent had spoken who committed crimes. And her older brother, her hero growing up, could not be a criminal.