He ignored me as I stepped inside. My father’s longtime secretary, Olga, was probably the only person in that building who was glad to see me. She got up and embraced me. “I’m so sorry about your wife, Theo. The service was beautiful. Caroline would have loved it. She was such a good girl.”

I opened the door that led into my father’s domain. It was a corner office, of course, with a spectacular panorama of the broad tree-lined boulevard that was Park Avenue. Angels would weep at a view like his. But my father had black screens installed over the glass walls, which permitted one to see the outline of the buildings but allowed no sunlight in. It was permanently twilight in his world. In his youth, my father’s obsession had been with visiting archaeological sites in sun-drenched climes. He’d paid for that passion with two bouts of skin cancer. The world had once been his oyster, but my father had been forced to retreat into a dark shell.

It was a grand place for a man who’d inherited a motel chain that stretched across America and turned it into a global luxury hotel brand. At one end was a dark wood desk as immobile as a bank vault, elaborately carved with lion heads and claws and intertwined flowers. The desk chair was carved wood as well, but lacquered and gilded so the winged goddesses that formed the armrests looked ready to take flight. Still, they couldn’t match the grandeur of the pair of ancient terra-cotta rams guarding a cabinet by the window; they were at least thirty-five hundred years old and obviously belonged behind glass in a museum.

“You haven’t set foot in this office in a year,” my father grumbled. “And when you stop by, you go see your sister but not me? What has Juliet ever done for you?”

“She’s made me completely miserable,” I admitted. “But I needed to talk to her about Caroline.”

“Juliet’s the last person I’d ask about her. She was like a scorpion with a kitten.”

“She told Caroline about Mirelle,” I said quietly.

I expected him to be furious. My father had a strict code about family secrets, and Juliet had violated his cardinal rule. But he appeared deflated, resting his elbows on the desk and cradling his head in his hands for a moment. “I knew it had to be either Juliet or Ursula.”

“You knew?” I asked, stepping closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry, son. I was hoping things would work out between you and Caroline. I didn’t want to meddle.” He sighed. “Caroline asked me about your first wife. She was upset, but she wouldn’t tell me how she found out.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was a mistake, that it wasn’t a legal marriage. I thought that was what she was upset about. I was wrong. She asked me how the girl died.”

I felt as if I were trapped in a vat of acid; I was burning up, inside and out. “You told her?”

“I said drugs were involved, that you were high when it happened. I tried to be vague about details.” His head drooped, as if his neck had just decided to quit its job. “Don’t hate me. I ended up giving her a version of the truth, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What version?”

“I told her you’d gone through a terrible time when you were a student in Berlin. She already knew about the drugs. I think she knew you used to self-harm.” He glanced at me, as if for confirmation; I nodded. “I told her you got involved with a terrible woman who made everything worse. And that one night, you were playing some kind of . . . uh, game . . . together, and she died.”

No wonder Caroline had wanted to divorce me. Not only had she discovered a dead woman in my past, but my father had implied that it was from a sex game gone wrong. “I don’t know how Mirelle died,” I said.

“Bloodily,” my father answered. “Juliet took photos of you.”

My sister hadn’t mentioned that part, but I had no doubt she’d shown Caroline whatever she’d snapped.

“Caroline wanted to know why you hadn’t gone to jail, or even been charged,” my father added. “She was persistent, and I cracked. I admitted that I had you whisked away to a rehab facility in another country. That I covered things up as best I could.” He stared into the distance. “I felt like she didn’t look at me the same way again after that. We were always so close, and she was as sweet as ever, but there was a gulf between us.”

“You admitted you covered up a crime,” I said. “What reaction were you expecting?”

“I hoped she would understand. A man can do a bad thing without actually being bad himself.”

It was the ends-justify-the-means argument I’d heard my father make all my life. It didn’t seem to apply here. “Juliet just attacked me for never telling Caroline about Mirelle. But how could I? She would have hated me. Anyone would.”

“Juliet is a snake, and you shouldn’t listen to anything she says. I wish you’d come back and work for the family business, Theo. You’re away on your own too much, and it’s affecting you. What’s past is—”

“Don’t say it.” I felt light-headed, almost sick. “Why did you summon me here?”

“We need to talk, son. About your alibi.”

“My alibi? For what?”

“For Caroline’s death,” he said.

I stared at my father, barely able to breathe. “You’ve lost your mind.”

My father waved his hand in the air dismissively. He was a large man with a face creased like ancient parchment, a look that was emphasized when his brows were tightly knit together, as they were at that moment. “Please don’t lie to me, Theo. It’s disrespectful.”

“Are you accusing me of killing my wife?” My voice was tight and strained. “I wasn’t even in New York when it happened.”

“I know that’s not true, Theo.”

I froze. How could he possibly know that?

He stared at me balefully before getting up and making his way to the bar trolley. He poured himself a scotch. “Drink?” he asked me.

“No, and you don’t need one either. You’re talking nonsense.”

It was a challenge to read his expression in the dusky light of his office. His face was crowded with shadows that crept through its hollows and peaks.

“Son, you seem to be unaware of several cold, hard facts,” he said at long last. “I know you lied to the police. You pretended you weren’t in New York, when I know you were.” He took a drink and carried his tumbler of scotch back to his desk.

“Look, Caroline had a heart condition. The police said there was nothing suspicious about her death. I don’t even know what you’re trying to accuse me of.”

“I’m not saying you did anything to Caroline.” He took a drink. “But you lied to the police, and I fear that will come back to haunt us. You told them you were flying back from Bangkok, but they can check on facts like that.”

I stood there, breathing hard. He was right. It had been stupid of me to lie to the police about something so basic.

“Look, Caroline was like a daughter to me. But you’re my flesh and blood. I want to help you if I can. Just tell me the truth. Were you seeing another woman? No judgments, son. I just think it’s better if I know what we’re dealing with.”

There was menace swimming under his words, circling like a shark. I had seen another woman, but not in the salacious way my father meant.

“I don’t need help,” I said.

“Maybe you don’t. But I’m here for you, son. I hope you know that.”

He said it so kindly. If anyone had been listening, they would’ve given him a father-of-the-year medal. But I’d accepted his help before, and I knew that he always expected an exponential return on whatever he gave. If he had his way, I’d quit my work and rejoin him at the company; he’d made it clear, many times, that was his dream for me. I’d tried to work in the family business and had only proven to myself that I didn’t want to be involved.

“I should go,” I said.

“Theo, I saw your hand.”

I glanced at my left hand, which I’d thrust into candle flames at the church. The palm was red and blistered, but I wasn’t in any mood to explain.

“I noticed it the day Caroline died,” my father added. That got my attention. He wasn’t talking about the burn, but the cut on my right hand. It hadn’t been a deliberate injury.

“What about it?” I asked. It was mostly healed up, though still discolored.

“There was broken wood and glass at your house,” he said. “Don’t worry, I cleaned it up. But Theo . . . there was some blood.”

I wasn’t about to tell him the truth about what had happened. “I’ve been having nightmares again,” I said quickly.

“Oh, no.” His face changed in that moment; his affable self vanished and left behind a blinking husk who looked as if he had swallowed pure vinegar. “About the attack?”

I nodded. I wasn’t lying, exactly; I was having nightmares, but they didn’t explain the glass and blood my father had mentioned. “Teddy’s roughly the same age I was then. Perhaps that’s why.”

“I know you tire of me saying the past is past, but it really is, son,” he said. “You can’t go back. You can’t change it; you can’t fix it. All you can do is leave it behind.”