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child from the bassinet, remembering to support the head. Her black hair was finely kinked, the skin just a shade darker than Teddy’s, every human detail perfect in miniature. Then, without warning, Teddy handed the baby to her grandfather, who to my surprise took her as if being handed an infant were the most natural thing. He held Carly, jiggling her gently to keep her from crying.
    â€œIsn’t that nice,” he said, peering at the tiny, oblivious face. “Isn’t that something. I was always good with babies,” he said, looking up with flushed happiness at the rest of us.
    Dot said, “This is certainly a side of you I’ve never seen.”
    After a pause Jeanie said, “I suppose you never forget.”
    â€œI raised two of them. I changed the diapers, fed them in the middle of the night, rocked them to sleep. Happiest days of my life. Every second is precious. Every single one.”
    Dot watched him with her jaw tense, vulnerability behind the customary hardness of her eyes. I tried to guess what she was thinking. All of us except Teddy had wanted nothing to do with Lawrence for twenty-one years. For nearly ten of those years, she’d been there for him, but now, it seemed, she was being asked to take a backseat. Of course, she wouldn’t be interested in such an understanding from me.
    Or maybe she was thinking of her son, who’d died after Lawrence helped him win his freedom.
    â€œBack to Mama,” Lawrence now said, breaking the tension of the moment as Carly yawned and awakened. He handed the baby to Tamara.
    Jeanie had brought a tray of cold meats, antipasti, fresh fruit, and grilled vegetables. “There’s stuff here I haven’t seen in two decades,” my father told us. “Kalamata olives . . . We used to go to this little place in North Beach—”
    He stopped, looking apologetically at Dot, and I realized that by we he meant he and Caroline, my mother. Dot nodded and touched his wrist, as if giving him permission to speak of that still-unfinished business. I both wanted and didn’t want him to go on. There was a nearness in the way he spoke of her, as if she were a living presence to him still, accessible in a way she never would be to me. At the same time, hearing him speak like that filled me with foreboding.
    As I’d tried to make clear to Crowder, the past wasn’t finished for any of us, not with the case hanging over our heads. I believed in my father’s innocence, but not as Teddy believed in it. I was a skeptic converted to uncertain faith. My eyes found Dot’s.
    We filled our plates and found seats. Jeanie wanted to know about the hearing, so Teddy and I filled her in. When I came to the part about Judge Liu granting my request for a probable cause hearing and scheduling it for two weeks out, I downplayed the news. She opened her mouth, but I gave her a warning look. The last thing I wanted was to talk legal strategy here, today, in front of the man engendering it.
    â€œLiu’s a good judge,” Jeanie said. “No surprise he granted bail. He gets it.” She looked from Teddy to me and back again, but she didn’t ask the question that seemed to be on her lips, the question of where Dot had come from.
    My father reloaded his plate with the good roast beef, deliciously pink, the plump red organic strawberries, the grilled asparagus, the olives. It was distracting, watching him eat. Our conversation kept stalling around the force of his hunger, the way he bit into the strawberry and sucked the fruit away from the greens, took a thin slice of roast beef between thumb and forefinger and folded it whole into his mouth, a bite so big that he had to swallow four times, still chewing, eyes watering, to get it down. Watching him with obvious pleasure, Dot lifted a napkin to his lips and wiped his mouth, then leaned forward and in sight of all, kissed him again.
    When he’d finished, he leaned back in the