Leaving the garage, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I should never have gone to see my father, even if curiosity was killing me. He was bound to ramble on about how much he’d changed, and I was going to hate him as much as ever. I’d thought I could control it, but seeing what Caro had written to him had put me over the edge.

I was ashamed I’d let the situation devolve into our old, tired battle. We mixed like oil and water. It had been that way between us since the day I’d discovered my mother’s desperate letter hidden in the family Bible. I’d hated their fights long before that, but finding the letter gave me a clarity I’d lacked before. Acknowledging my mother was a kind of hostage, living in terror of the man she’d married, changed everything. Before, I’d thought of the fights as their fights, as if the battles belonged to both of them and were as routine as dancing on Friday nights. After all, my mother had a sharp tongue, and she wasn’t cowed by her husband, no matter how hard he hit her.

I got back on the 7 train, switching to the G at Court Square. The G was the lone train connecting Queens with Brooklyn, and taking it was always a weird adventure as it zigged and zagged. Every so often, I glanced around furtively, worried someone might see a tear glimmering in my eye, but I had little to fear. The G train was half-empty, and nobody who glanced my way looked past my tattoos.

It was an unusually slow train. It took me over an hour to get to Fort Hamilton Parkway. From there, I walked to Green-Wood Cemetery. As I headed in, I wished I had a place where I could visit my mother. I didn’t believe in ghosts, exactly, but I didn’t disbelieve in them either. Energy had to go somewhere, after all. My mother’s ashes were, as far as I knew, still in an urn from the funeral home at our father’s house. Caro once told me our father hadn’t even opened the paper bag; he’d stuck it in a cabinet. I hated my father for many reasons, but the fact he hadn’t given my mother any kind of decent resting place was high on the list.

I wasn’t sure I could find Caro’s grave on my own. I’d driven in with Theo, looping around the twisting roads in a car. On foot, entering from a gate on the far side of the cemetery, I could roam over the grassy hills with tombstones sprouting like toadstools, walking in a crooked approximation of how the crow flies. I was distracted by monuments and mausoleums whispering of grandiose fantasies. There was a lot of beauty in this place, but everything I appreciated was a reminder of another family’s loss. I didn’t mind the detailed pyramids and castles—even if they felt more like monuments to big egos instead of people—but the statues of sweet children and gentle lambs and doomed lovers overwhelmed me. I wasn’t the sentimental type, but the atmosphere of unrelenting grief inched under my skin like dampness, making my bones ache.

By the time I got to my sister’s grave, I was ready to lie down beside her. The line from her letter—I know Deirdre is difficult—still stuck in my craw, but it wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t just difficult—I prided myself on it, going toe-to-toe with people I despised. I wondered how, exactly, I’d gotten that way. It had been part of my nature as long as I could remember.

“You could’ve told me how you felt when you were alive,” I said, plopping down onto the grass. “It would’ve made everything easier.”

The gravediggers had filled the hole with dirt, leaving a raised brown scar in the green grass. The small stone marker was covered by a bouquet of white roses with their heavy blooms drooping, as if they’d fallen asleep.

I sat quietly for a while, wishing I could channel my sister’s spirit. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with you? I wanted to ask her. Why feed me a handful of bread crumbs after you’re already gone?

In the quiet of the graveyard, I couldn’t help but think about the difference in tone between the letter she’d written to our father and the one she’d sent me. The guy from Osiris’s Vault, Todd, had said something about different versions of her note to me. Maybe that was because she’d dashed it off early in the morning, less than an hour before she died. Her letter to our father was thoughtful and measured, even if it contained painful truths. Her message to me was rushed and panicked. Something had terrified her.

Theo killed his first wife and got away with it. Bring him to justice, no matter what you have to do.

Theo’s father had admitted his son had shown up around five that morning, but his visit had been brief. Ben had told me he was supposed to meet Caro near her house, but that plan had changed, with my sister deciding to come down to his neighborhood. I understood that Theo’s surprise appearance had rattled Caro—it had to be why she’d dashed off her message to me—but I felt like there was something I was missing, some detail that would thread everything together.

I didn’t know what she expected me to do. She’d left me with exactly nothing . . .

Or had she?

All her data in Osiris’s Vault was gone, but that wasn’t her only digital footprint. I thought of the photographs and the memory card she’d given me. The spreadsheets had been a surprise. What if there was something else on there, a detail I’d missed because I hadn’t known what I was looking for?

That thought pricked at me like a thorn all the way back to Queens. I didn’t even stop at Kung Fu Tea on my way home. But when I landed on my block, a cop car was parked outside the house, lights flashing.

My landlord, Saira Mukherjee, was on the lawn, talking to a uniformed cop. He was taking notes and nodding. When she noticed me, Saira waved me over frantically.

“We’ve been robbed!” she yelled.

I hurried over. “What happened?”

“Wilson was in the basement”—Wilson was the human foghorn in the room next to mine—“and he heard some strange sounds. When he poked his head out of his room, he saw your door was open. There was a man ransacking your room.”

“You caught him?”

Saira gave me a look that said, Are you for real? Wilson hid from his own shadow most of the year.

“The burglar saw him and punched Wilson in the head. He dragged him into your room and messed him up. Poor Wilson’s at Elmhurst now.” Saira meant the public hospital nearby.

“We’re going to need you to do an inventory, see what was taken,” the cop said.

I nodded and moved on autopilot toward the house.

My room was a mess. Whoever had broken in had ignored the lock and splintered the plywood door. I didn’t own much, but most of what I had was lying on the floor. I sifted through the rubble but couldn’t find the envelope from Caro. My laptop was gone. I searched on my hands and knees in case the memory card had somehow fallen out of the envelope, but it had vanished.

CHAPTER 32

DEIRDRE

There was no way I could stay at my apartment that night. I gathered up some clothes and toiletries and made my escape to Reagan’s house. I felt embarrassed, standing on the porch. There I was, asking for them to take care of me. Again.

“Would it be okay if I stayed here tonight?” I asked when Mrs. Chen answered. “Someone broke into my place.”

Reagan wasn’t even there—she was working crazy hours as usual. Her mother set me up in what had been my bedroom as a teenager. The window overlooked the street, and the tree next to it was a favorite spot for blue jays. I had no way to thank her enough.

“Who would break into your room, Dee?” Mrs. Chen asked me, perplexed. “You have no money! What could they take? This city is too dangerous now.”

I lay awake for part of the night, asking myself the same question. As much as I hated Theo, he was an ocean away. Ben seemed like the obvious suspect—he’d wanted me to hand over the memory card—but another part of my brain was stuck on Theo’s father. I’d mentioned the card to him. Even though I hadn’t said what was on it, he surely knew Caro had a memory card on her when she died. The cops said it had been given back to her family, so maybe the old man even knew what was on it.

I told myself I was being paranoid. Aubrey Sutton-Braithwaite was definitely out to get me. I could see him breaking into my room and smashing everything I owned for fun. But he wouldn’t care about the memory card.

In the morning, I managed to stop Mrs. Chen from waking Reagan up.

“Do you have any idea how hard she works?” I asked.

“Let me tell you about working hard,” she shot back. I listened quietly while she regaled me with stories I may have heard a few times before. In the end, I promised to go to Mass with her—on a Saturday, no less—and that mollified her enough to let Reagan rest.

Caro’s funeral aside, it had been a long time since I’d set foot in a church. Mrs. Chen attended St. Adalbert’s. Growing up, I’d taken First Communion at the Church of the Ascension, another Elmhurst institution. It lay on the north side of the train tracks that bisected the neighborhood, just like my father’s house did. St. Adalbert’s was on the south side, which meant the odds of running into him were low.