Thursday at ten the cousins sit down in the Crane Hall reading room with the "true account" Papa Harry supposedly left behind, and they are ready for a lie. What they aren't ready for is the other paper in the box. It's real, it's old, and it has a name on it they have trusted since the third fencepost. The Society cracks down the middle, and the one man who could explain it won't say a word.

“Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”

Psalm 41:9 (KJV)

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The envelope from Crane Hall is opened at Nana's kitchen table, in daylight, the way Papa Harry would have wanted. It is his handwriting. Nana knows it at a glance. And every line of it takes back what he spent his life saying. Five cousins start weighing the evidence. Jenna won't touch the letter again, and she can't say why, only that a thing can wear a man's hand and still not be him.

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

1 John 4:1 (KJV)

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The six cousins do the hard thing Papa Harry asked of them: they put on their Sunday clothes, drive two counties over, and sit in a chapel full of people who love Reverend Doctor Vernon Crane. The testimonies are true, and the applause is real, and David can't stop clapping. Then the choir sings an old crossing hymn all the way to the last verse, and for the first time the cousins see the polite man in the good coat from the front — and he has something for them.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

Matthew 7:15–16 (KJV)

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