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a family friend, that he really cared about Morgan and would work hard for him. She’d thought that his quiet, professional manner in the courtroom would help them get to the truth. But when he had a witness on the stand she’d seen how weak he was, with no ability to defend his client.
    She didn’t know how to start an appeal. She didn’t know if there was a waiting period, didn’t know how appeals worked. She’d been so sure Morgan would be acquitted that she hadn’t bothered to find out. She had to find a newattorney and figure out how to pay him. They’d bought the house after Morgan went in the navy, with the smallest payments they could obtain. Maybe she could get a second mortgage or borrow money on the shop. She wanted an attorney who would dig harder, a man strong enough to make a new jury see the truth. She tried to cheer herself that an appeal would end the nightmare, that Morgan would be out soon, that it wouldn’t be long and he’d be home again. Meantime she could run the shop just fine. Albert, the new mechanic, was a skilled worker even if he was dull about everything else. She knew she could take on more bookkeeping jobs, she always had a waiting list. Sammie would be in school, and she’d have plenty of time to work. Long empty nights in which to work. Long, empty weekends.
    She supposed, if they were to get a new trial, there would have to be new evidence. Where and how would she, or even a new attorney, find evidence after the police had been over everything, had collected and presented in court all the evidence to be found? She stood in the middle of the living room frantic with fear, her mind circling like a caged animal searching for a way to escape.
    At last she picked up her purse and headed for Mama’s, to tell Sammie what must be told. Try to explain to her nine-year-old child that the law, which was meant to protect them, had turned against them. That the grown-ups on the jury whom Sammie knew and trusted, did not believe her daddy, that the whole town had betrayed him.

5
    I N THE VISITING room of the Rome jail, Morgan stiffened as two deputy U.S. marshals pulled him away from Becky and Sammie. It took all the resolve he had not to fight them as they jerked his arms behind him, snapped on handcuffs and forced him toward the door. The time was eight-fifteen, the morning after he was sentenced in Rome’s U.S. courthouse by the town’s one federal judge. He and Becky and Sammie had been allowed only a few moments to say good-bye, the three of them clinging together. As if they might form an unbreakable chain that could never be wrenched apart. Sammie, when she looked up at him, was so vulnerable and perplexed. He knew Becky had debated a long time whether to bring her this morning. But the pain Sammie was experiencing now was preferable to his being taken away without seeing her, to Sammie learning later that Morgan was gone for good, that he might never come home again.
    From the hall, he looked back for as long as he could see them, Sammie biting her lip, the tears streaming down. Becky stone-faced, holding the child close, trying not to cry.Then he couldn’t see them anymore, he was forced down the hall, through the jail’s back door and into the backseat of a U.S. marshal’s car. A heavy metal grid separated him from the front seat as if, despite handcuffs and a belly chain, they thought he would attack the driver from the rear.
    In the backseat of the official vehicle, handcuffed to a second deputy, he watched the driver get settled, listened to the engine of the heavy Packard start up smooth and powerful. As the black car headed through Rome in the direction of Atlanta, he imagined Becky and Sammie getting in their car, holding each other, comforting each other. Imagined them driving the few blocks to Caroline’s, and he was mighty glad for Becky’s strong and caring mother.
    Becky had been so still during the trial,