"JCPenney," he said. "Up at Polaris. In October. Kid there helped me pick it out. Took a while. Kid was patient. Said navy's what lawyers wear."
I didn't say anything. I couldn't.
"I had it on," he said. "That morning. I got up at five, I showered, I put it on. Tie and everything. I stood right there in that mirror on the back of the door." He nodded at it, a long cheap mirror screwed onto the hollow door with plastic clips. "And I looked fine. I looked like anybody. I looked like some guy who was going to sit in the back row and clap when they said your name and then go home and not bother anybody. And I stood there and I thought about that judge. Ambler. He told me to hold on to it. Said I'd want it someday. And I thought about what I said in there, about getting a better one when you were old enough that you needed me to look good. And I thought, well, this is the day, isn't it. She's a lawyer. She's going to work for those people. She needs me to look good." He was quiet. "And I took it off and hung it back up and put on the other one."
"Why?"
He sat down on the edge of the bed, next to the navy suit with its tags, and looked at the floor between his boots.
"I'd like to tell you it was all for you," he said. "That'd be a nice thing to tell you. Some of it was. I wanted to be the same guy at the end that I was at the start. I wanted to stand there in the thing I stood there in when they tried to take you, and see you get up on that stage, and know I did what I told that judge I'd do. I was there. That was the whole deal. I was there every morning." He rubbed his thumb across the knuckles of his other hand. "And some of it was Halyna. She made me promise. Seemed like the day to keep it. But I'm not going to lie to you, Laney. Some of it was for Mrs. Severance. I wanted her to see me in it. I wanted her to look at me and know I kept it and know why. I wanted her to stand there in her good coat with her pin on and remember what her lawyer said and how it went. That's not a nice thing. I know that. Twenty-four years and I'm still sore. I'm not proud of that part. But I'm not going to pretend it wasn't in there."
"She knew," I said. "She went white as a sheet. She told me today it was the most eloquent thing anyone ever said to her."
He looked up at that, surprised, and then something complicated went across his face, and he looked back down.
"Well," he said. "She always did talk fancy."