She looked at him.
"I heard you say it on the phone yesterday," he said. "They're calling Zeus a dangerous animal."
She closed the laptop. She folded her hands on the table. She thought about how much to say, and then she thought about Derek, who had believed that children deserved the truth in proportion to their ability to hold it, and that underestimating them was its own kind of harm.
"Something happened a long time ago," she said. "When Zeus and I were still deployed, while I was overseas. There was a man who went somewhere he was not supposed to go, and Zeus did his job, and the man got hurt. It was investigated completely. I was cleared. Zeus was cleared. I was actually given an award for how I handled it."
Finn absorbed this. "So why are they using it?"
"Because they took one piece of the story," Jade said, "and they cut off everything around it. They're hoping people will not look close enough to ask questions."
He was quiet for a long time. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car passed slowly.
"That's not fair," he finally said.
"No," Jade agreed. "It isn't."
He looked at her for another moment. Then he said very quietly, "Okay, Mom." He pushed his chair back and went upstairs. Zeus lifted his head, looked at Jade once, and followed him.
The knock came the next morning. Jade opened the front door to find Evelyn Hayes standing on the porch in a pale blue house dress, holding a covered casserole dish with both hands and a USB drive balanced on top of the lid. Her white hair was neatly pinned; her expression was the expression of a woman who had made a decision and was not second-guessing it.
"I should have done this sooner," Evelyn said. "I'm sorry it took me this long."
Jade opened the door wider. "Come in."