Dean was sitting on my porch steps, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee from the diner on Route 9. He looked like he had been there for a while.
"You didn't come," I said.
"I couldn't."
"You could have. You chose not to."
He stood up. He looked at me, and even in the dark, I could see that something had changed. His face was different, less confident, more like the boy I remembered.
"I got a lawyer," he said.
"Of course you did."
"He told me not to talk to you. He told me to leave town and wait it out. He said the case was too old, that you didn't have evidence, that no one would believe you."
"Was he right?"
Dean didn't answer.
"What do you want, Dean?"
He looked at the coffee in his hands. Then he looked at me. "I want to tell the truth."
I stood very still. "Why?"
"Bec
