I stared at that hopeful image, wondering where we had gone wrong. It had happened slowly and then very quickly, like a boulder picking up speed as it crashed downhill. When I ran our time together through my mind like an old newsreel, I could pinpoint the moments of crisis and bad decisions. I didn’t want to think about the ones I’d made; it was so much easier to be angry at Caroline for the harm she’d done.

The wall of photographs was the one element that distinguished my room from a trendy hotel, and I attempted to distract myself with them. There was one of a newborn Teddy, and another of my son building a sandcastle on a beach. One was of my mother in costume for a West End production of Antigone, her black hair coiled in ancient Greek style and held back by a gold diadem; even in a black-and-white photo, her eyes were piercing. There should’ve been photographs of us together before she divorced my father, but I’d never found them. Instead, my childhood was represented by a lone shot of my sister and me on skis, when I was five and she was nine, and another of us around the same time with my father and stepmother at their wedding. In both shots, Juliet scowled at the camera, while I looked dazed. There was a blank space where there had been a photograph of Caroline and me on our wedding day. I’d cut my right hand when I’d smashed the glass and broken the frame.

That reminded me of what I’d done to my left hand in the church that morning. The wound was wrapped in a beige bandage now, but the pain underneath was sharp. How could I have been so stupid and selfish? My son needed me. I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in pain and self-harm as I had as a student. I could never do that again.

I crept down the hall to Teddy’s room. Since I’d put my son to bed, he’d already summoned me back three times. In the last instance, he’d been upset to the point of tears that he couldn’t find his floppy-eared stuffed rabbit, who had fallen on the carpet. Since his mother’s death, every loss—however temporary—hit him frighteningly hard. I cracked the door open and felt tremendous relief at the sight of my son, asleep, hugging Bunny tightly. Reassured, I closed the door and made my way back to my room. As I did, I heard a crash and a shriek from the kitchen.

I hurried down the stairs to the first floor and headed to the back of the house. There was a stained-glass window with a red flower over the kitchen door, illuminated by the light inside. Opening the door, I found my stepmother kneeling on the floor, picking up the remains of a shattered wine bottle with her bare hands. Guilt surged through me; I should have checked on her that afternoon, but I’d forgotten to. An elastic bandage was wrapped around her wrist.

“Ursula, are you all right?”

“Theo! How are you keeping?” she asked with a bright smile, as if we were having a social visit. Her diamond drop earrings glittered in the bright artificial light, and there was red lipstick smeared on her teeth. She was wearing a somber black dress as if she were finally ready for the funeral.

“What happened?”

“I dropped a bottle, dear. Don’t make a big deal of it.”

I heard footsteps behind me, and Theo’s nanny, Gloria, appeared, wrapped in a fluffy pink robe. “Oh, no! Are you okay, Mrs. Thraxton?”

“I’m fine, fine. Just ungeschickt, as my husband always reminds me.” Ursula meant clumsy. Her accented English was so fluent people usually assumed she was British, but German words popped out of her mouth when she was dead drunk, as she very clearly was at that moment.

“I can clean up,” Gloria offered.

“No, I’ll do it,” I said. “Thank you for everything today, Gloria. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

Gloria leaned closer. “She’s been coming over all the time,” she whispered. “I think your father is cutting off her supply earlier and earlier.” She gave Ursula a concerned glance and retreated from the room.

The wine was still spreading over the Italian tile floor. I looked for a mop and bucket and couldn’t find either.

“There’s a dustpan in that closet,” Ursula said, as if she were the one who lived in the house.

I retrieved it and cleaned up the mess as best I could. As I did, Ursula removed another bottle from the wine fridge. She carefully extracted the cork and poured a glass for herself.

“How’s your wrist?” I asked. “Father said you had an accident this morning.”

“I tripped and fell,” Ursula said. “It’s only a sprain. Your father likely told you I was drunk, but I wasn’t. Not very drunk, anyway. I was upset about Caroline.”

“I’m glad it was just a sprain. You need to be careful.”

“I wanted to ask how you are feeling, dear,” Ursula said, then took a long gulp of chablis.

My stepmother had never been subtle. I suspected that my father, after his marriage to my mother—a volatile stage actress everyone described as complicated—was glad to be married to a woman who was straightforward in her wants. Ursula liked money, jewelry, and alcohol, though not necessarily in that order.

“It’s been a very long day,” I said.

“A long day, a long week, a long year,” Ursula said. “It never ends, does it?”

Without asking, she reached in the cupboard for a tumbler and poured some wine for me. “No, thanks.”

“You’re going to want it,” Ursula said. “What did you do to your hand?”

She was right; I took a long drink. It never ceased to amaze me that—no matter how inebriated she was—Ursula was the most meticulous person I’d ever met. No detail went past her unnoticed.

“Did my father send you over?”

“Absolutely not. Nor do I report to him.”

“I used to think you were reporting to Klaus.” Ursula was the younger sister of Klaus von Strohm, my father’s business partner. Where my father was jocular and outgoing, Klaus was saturnine and stern.

“My brother the Arschgesicht?” Ursula raised an eyebrow as she elegantly cursed him out. “I’m certain he hoped I would report back to him when I married your father. Men always think women exist for their service. They can fuck themselves.” She took a long drink. “Your hand, dear?”

“I burned my hand on a candle in the church today.”

“Only one candle?”

“A few.”

She finished her glass and set it on the counter. “I thought you stopped doing that years ago.”

“I did. Today was the first time in a very long time.” This was the truth; I hadn’t sliced or burned my skin since Teddy was born. In the past couple of years—ever since I’d left the family business—I hadn’t even thought about it.

“Are you taking drugs again?”

“No. I haven’t since I went through rehab.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Ursula poured more wine into her glass. “Because that was a nightmarish time for us all.”

“I know,” I said softly. We were silent for a minute. “I need to ask you something, Ursula. Did Caroline ever ask you about my first wife?”

My stepmother nodded sadly. “She did. It was almost three months ago. She was a little bit sneaky about it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my brain doing the arithmetic. Caroline had first mentioned divorce two months ago, but she’d never explained why she suddenly wanted one.

“She came to your father’s house several times, looking for photographs.” Ursula took another drink. She and my father lived in a tremendous town house directly across the street from ours, but my stepmother only ever referred to it as your father’s house. The smaller town house Caroline and I shared had been a wedding gift from them. “One day, when no one else was around, she said to me, ‘Is there a photo album from Theo’s first wedding?’”

I inhaled sharply. “How did she . . . ?”

Ursula put up a hand. “I have no idea—I am simply telling you what I know, dear. Caroline caught me by surprise with that, but she was too clever for her own good. I said, ‘What photo album?’ Of course, I should have said, ‘What wedding?’ But it didn’t really matter. Caroline said, ‘Wasn’t Theo married before?’ and I said of course not. She persisted. ‘Isn’t that why he dropped out of university in Berlin?’ Ah, pardon me, she said college, not university. I asked who told her this baffling thing.”

“What did she say?”

“She tried to pretend you—yes, you yourself, Theo—had made some oblique reference.” Ursula rolled her eyes. “I grew up with a father and brother in the Stasi. This pretty little girl thought she could trick me?”

I didn’t say it was likely because Ursula was drunk when Caroline tried to ambush her, but the thought crossed my mind. My stepmother could read me, though.

“You are thinking it is because of the wine.” She lifted her glass and drank defiantly. “I have been keeping secrets for the Thraxton family ever since my brother placed me in your father’s house. I am a vault. I do not slip up. I did not spill a word about your . . . mistakes.”