Hugo leaned against the doorframe with the insouciance of an otter who’d been hired to shoot a Dolce & Gabbana advertisement. The top of his dark mop of hair rose just above my shoulder, though he usually wore a hat, carefully styling his silhouette to appear taller. He was of Filipino descent, but he embodied an impeccable, Waspy elegance that graduated into dandyism. That day, he was decked out in a gray Saville Row suit with a pale-olive fedora and patterned pocket square. We were the same age, but he always seemed older. It was probably the hats.

“I always wondered how Caroline managed to accomplish so much with such a pristine desk,” Hugo said. “This room looks more like a stage set than an office.”

“How have you been?”

“Fine,” Hugo said. “You know what? I’m going to grab a coffee. I’ll be right back.”

He set a large ivory envelope embossed with the name of his firm—Casper Peters McNally—on Caroline’s desk and left the room.

The invitation was too enticing to pass up. I knew Hugo was an excellent lawyer, so this wasn’t a slip-up. There was a reason he’d left the room, even if he was legally barred from telling me what it was. I slid the pages out of the envelope.

The first document was a request for a restraining order to prevent me from taking my son out of New York.

I flipped through the rest quickly. I didn’t have time to read much, but the gist of it was clear: my sister was launching a legal case stating that I was too unstable to parent my own child.

Dr. Haven’s office was in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I’d chosen her partly because my father didn’t believe “real” therapists existed beyond Manhattan’s borders. She had written extensively about guided mental imagery therapy—also known as Katathym imaginative therapy—which intrigued me because my own memories were knotted up in terror. As a child, I’d had endless nightmares about tigers pulling me apart as their claws turned to knives. There were long, blank spaces from my childhood when I remembered nothing, bookended by indelible images.

As a teenager, I’d found drugs and cutting my own skin effective ways to push back the memories that haunted me. I’d started seeing Dr. Haven a couple of years earlier, though the pandemic had disrupted that. But that day, I needed a different kind of help.

“I’m sorry I only have a half hour,” she said when I walked in. “But we can—”

“My wife is dead, and my sister is attempting to steal my son,” I said.

The room was quiet for a moment except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

“I’m not saying you don’t need therapy,” Dr. Haven answered. “But you need to be in a lawyer’s office right now.”

I was too agitated to sit, so I paced across the well-worn wool rug.

“I came to you because I realized that my family has lied to me about . . . a lot of things,” I said.

“What you’ve described to me is like a hall of mirrors. Your family made you feel like you couldn’t trust anyone. Even yourself.”

“They’re going to do the same thing to Teddy if they get the chance,” I said. “That’s why I wanted custody if Caroline and I divorced. But I think my sister is intending to blackmail me.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No. I wasn’t supposed to see the documents I saw. It was putting me on notice about her legal maneuvering.”

“Why would she want custody of your son?”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “She wants control of the family business.”

“But you told me she already runs the business.”

“She does the work, but it’s still my father’s. He’s very—” It was on the tip of my tongue to say old fashioned, but I knew that was a euphemism. “He’s sexist. He wants an heir. That’s why he gave me his name and begged my wife and me to use the same name for our son. When Teddy was born, my father said that one day, my son would inherit everything. He wasn’t joking; he meant it. Juliet is well aware. This is her power play.”

“She would blackmail you? However many details you’re comfortable sharing, you know you can speak confidentially here.”

“Yes.” I’d told Dr. Haven a great deal, more than I’d ever revealed to anyone else. But I’d never mentioned Mirelle in any of our sessions. Perhaps it was time. “You know that I was a drug addict. I met a woman when I was in my second year of school in Berlin. We fell in love. She was the first person who seemed to understand me, to understand what I needed . . .” I gulped for air. “We were only together for three months, but it was the happiest, most carefree time of my life.”

“What happened?”

“We got married in a small church in the French countryside near Colmar,” I said. “Technically, it wasn’t a legal marriage—I didn’t know until later that you needed to have a civil ceremony in France to be married.” My father had pointed that out to me months after Mirelle’s death, after I’d gone through rehab. The way he’d relayed that information implied that it wasn’t supposed to matter that Mirelle was dead. She hadn’t really been my wife, after all. “A few days later, I woke up, and Mirelle was dead. She had been stabbed. There was blood everywhere.”

Dr. Haven stared at me, her expression rapt. “What happened then?”

“I called my father. He was away on a trip, but he sent . . .” I closed my eyes. Who had he sent besides Juliet? I couldn’t remember. It couldn’t have just been her, I thought. But that was stupid and sexist; Juliet was as physically strong as I was. “My sister got me onto a plane and took me to rehab. My father eventually showed up there. I was in the facility for close to a year.”

“What about your wife?”

I appreciated her referring to Mirelle that way. “My father told me he’d taken care of everything. He told me to forget it, to pretend it never happened. Juliet wouldn’t even talk to me for years after that. She started calling me ‘lady-killer.’ She still does, as a matter of fact. But now she’s trying to use it to take custody of Teddy.”

Dr. Haven steepled her fingers. “How much do you remember of that night?”

“I just told you.”

“No, you explained what your father and sister told you,” she pointed out. “What do you actually remember?”

There were only two moments that I was certain of. One was surfacing from an opioid haze in my apartment and seeing Mirelle on the floor next to me, her eyes open, her chest and neck covered in blood. The second was being on a private plane with Juliet. You ruined my week in Paris, you stupid piece of shit, she’d said. I wish you were dead.

“I was a mess,” I said softly. “I don’t know what I did.”

“It sounds like you’ve spent your adult life running away from it,” Dr. Haven said. “Did you never think about exploring what happened, finding out what led to this woman’s death?”

“No,” I admitted. “I only ever wanted to bury that night.” The image of Mirelle soaked in blood haunted me; the truth was, I deserved so much worse. It had occurred to me—many times—that I belonged in jail.

“Did your father disapprove of your relationship with this woman?” Dr. Haven asked.

“He was horrified by it.”

“We’ve been focusing our therapy on your childhood memories, but I have to be honest. I think nothing is more important than recalling these memories. Have you ever tried to stimulate your recall of that night?”

“Never.”

“What about retracing your steps from those days?”

“I haven’t set foot in Berlin since that time. Or Germany, for that matter.”

“Theo,” she said. “You have to face this. You need to know what you did.”

She was as nonjudgmental as a person could be, but her urgency was unmistakable. “I know.”

“You’re aware from the therapy we’ve done that there’s nothing more important than triggering your sensory memory. You need to visit Berlin to do that. I’m not saying it will all come back, but that would be essential to unknotting this.”

“I can’t go away right now. My son needs me.”

“Your son needs a father who can nurture him,” Dr. Haven said. “If you’re determined to distance yourself from reality, you won’t be able to do that. Take a couple of days for yourself. It really is that important.”

“I can’t leave Teddy,” I said.

“Are you able to be there for him now, or are you dealing with too many of your own issues?” she asked.

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Theo, do you remember when you first came to see me?” she added. “You told me your family had lied to you throughout your life, but for the first time, you had proof.”

“Yes.” I could never forget. That proof—a letter I’d received three years ago—was with me at all times.

“You wanted to know why your family would do that to you. I told you I couldn’t answer that—only you could. But you can’t hide from the truth, no matter how ugly it is. You need to face it.”

She was right. I had no choice. I pulled out my phone and booked the first flight I could get to Berlin.

CHAPTER 20

DEIRDRE