“Open it.”
Julian said it low, like the words cost him something. He hadn’t moved toward the folder himself, hadn’t touched it since he’d seen it sitting there, unlabeled, exactly where he swore he’d never left anything.
Naomi reached for it before she could talk herself out of it.
Inside was a single photograph, old, the edges gone soft with handling. Two men standing outside a courthouse, one of them clearly a younger Thomas Calloway, the other a face she didn’t recognize until she read the caption penciled on the back in handwriting she didn’t know.
W. Ashford. Same day as testimony. Ask why they’re smiling.
Her father. Standing beside Thomas Calloway, both of them smiling, the day her father’s testimony sent an innocent man to prison.
“They knew each other,” Naomi said. Her voice
