A new soccer ball.
A remote-controlled car.
A bright blue bicycle with silver handlebars.
I remembered hearing him boast about that bicycle shortly before his family moved away.
Now Evelyn was showing me a receipt from a sporting-goods store.
The purchaser was listed as Martin Vale.
The amount matched a smaller withdrawal from the account that had received money connected to the Lumen Project.
I stared at the dates.
"You're telling me somebody paid Nigel's father before the accident, and then he bought Nicholas a bicycle afterward?"
Evelyn nodded.
"Those events are documented. But a sequence of payments alone doesn't prove why they happened."
I knew she was right.
Still, my stomach twisted.
I remembered the swing.
Nicholas standing behind me.
Someone calling his name.
Then the shove.
For twenty years, I'd believed it had been a cruel childhood prank.
What if Nicholas had been encouraged to do it?
What if the adults had known?
