“Thank you for taking care of Teddy while I was gone,” I said. “I’m well aware that you are long overdue to have time off.”

Gloria waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not a problem. It’s an awful time for the family. And I love Teddy; you know that.”

“I am eternally grateful. Just so you know, I’ll be moving Teddy out of this house as soon as I can find a place.”

“You’re going to stay in New York?”

“I don’t want to uproot Teddy and take him away from everyone he knows. Just my father. I am hoping that you’ll be willing to move with us, though. I don’t know what Teddy or I would do without you.”

“And give up living across the street from the man who refers to me as ‘the Help’?” She beamed. “In a heartbeat. If you’re staying here, we’ll figure something out.”

“Thank you, Gloria.”

I headed upstairs to my own room. I didn’t have a plan. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay in that house any longer.

That was when I heard a noise from Caroline’s room.

I opened the door and found Ursula seated at Caroline’s vanity table, a tray of jewelry in front of her. She looked like an eager magpie. “Everything depends on it,” she said.

“Ursula?”

“You’re back, dear boy.” Ursula brightened when she saw me, as if a switch had been flipped. “How was your trip?”

“Awful and illuminating, in equal measure. What are you doing?”

“Sorting some things.”

“Why?”

“I put some things out of order,” she said cryptically, “and now I need to set them right.”

“I saw your brother when I was in Berlin,” I said.

“Klaus has been dead to me for years.”

“He’s not quite as I remembered. He has changed. He wanted me to tell you he’s sorry for being a bastard. He said it’s his only regret.”

Ursula laughed softly. “Ah, Theo, you are a dear boy, but you are gullible if you believe the leopard changes his spots.” She moved a couple of rings into a box. “I grew up in the Stasi. My father was a senior officer. Klaus followed in his footsteps. My mother drank herself to death, and now I follow in her footsteps. These paths are set for us when we are young. I often think, if only your mother had taken you and your sister away and started a new life. How different everything would have been.”

“My mother got out,” I said. “But she left Juliet and me behind.”

“No one gets out, Theo. At least not alive.”

Ursula loved to make dramatic pronouncements, and it felt like the wrong time to mention that my mother had flown to Guam for a divorce. It had been uncontested by my father because she allowed him to have full custody of Juliet and me. My mother had saved herself, but not her children.

She stared into the mirror. “I am full of hidden horrors.”

I shuddered in recognition when she said it. “I’ve heard that before.”

“It’s a line from Medea.”

“But why would you . . . ?”

“It was a line from a play your mother was in. She kept repeating it.” She picked up the glass in front of her, only to discover it was empty.

“I don’t understand.”

“He loved her—I can tell you that. As much as he is capable of loving anyone, which is not much in the greater scheme of things. But he wanted to control her, so he lied and played games with her mind. I am ashamed of my part in it. I was in the house to help with the kinder, and instead I slept with their father. No wonder Juliet hates me.” Ursula got up from the vanity slowly, with the painful self-awareness of the inebriated. “Of course, he did exactly the same things to me that he did to her. I started losing parts of myself until I didn’t even know who I was anymore.”

She moved toward me unsteadily.

“Now you understand,” she added. “Why I wanted to help Caroline escape. She needed a different life. She and Teddy both did.”

What I understood was that Ursula had to be very drunk, and she didn’t make any sense. “What does that mean, Ursula?”

“I tried to get away from your father, and I failed. This life is what I deserve. Your father is my penance. But Caroline never did the things I did. She didn’t deserve this. She wanted me to help her, but I can’t do what she wanted me to do.”

“Which was what?”

“She wanted me to reveal the Thraxton family secrets if anything happened to her,” Ursula said. “She wanted the truth to come out. But I can’t. It’s buried too deep, and I was involved in burying some of it. Teddy . . .” A sob rippled through her chest, but she stifled it. “Poor Teddy does not deserve this.”

“Let me help you home.”

She waved me away. “I’ve been doing this a long time, dear boy. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to see your father ever again.”

She passed me and made her way down the hall, supported by the wall, then down the stairs, leaning heavily on the bannister. I shook my head and went to my room. I sat on the bed for a minute to take off my shoes. It was only two in the afternoon—eight o’clock in Berlin—but I hadn’t slept on the flight, and I passed out.

I woke up an hour later, woolly headed and cotton mouthed. According to my watch, it was nine p.m., but the sun was streaming in through my window. It took me a minute to realize I’d forgotten to change it from Berlin time.

I put my shoes on and splashed some water on my face. No one seemed to be home, but I heard the television in Gloria’s room. I knocked on the door.

“Sorry to bother you, but where’s Teddy?”

“Ursula took him across the street to play with the trains,” Gloria said.

“Ah.” I didn’t want to have round two with my father just yet, but I wasn’t going to allow Teddy to be in his company for another minute. I hurried out the front door and across the street and rang the bell.

The disapproving butler answered.

“I’m here to pick up my son.”

“He isn’t here.”

“He came over with Ursula.”

The butler shook his head. “She’s not home.”

I was ready to push past him, but he seemed as surprised as I was.

“She said she was going to your house,” he added.

“She came over, but now she’s gone,” I said, panic rising inside me. “They’re both gone.”

CHAPTER 43

DEIRDRE

I was lying in a strange bed, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. Everything in my line of sight was wobbly, as if I was underwater and staring at ripples on the surface. As my brain shook me awake, the waters parted and my vision cleared.

There was a man in a white coat who didn’t look any older than me. He had a scraggly neck-beard and a notable underbite. “It’s alive,” he said, like I was Frankenstein’s monster stirring under a tarp.

I promised myself the first thing I’d do, when I was sure I wasn’t dead, was drop-kick this jerk. “Where am I?” I croaked.

“You’re in the hospital,” he asked. “I’m Dr. Weiss. Do you remember how you got here?”

“I was pushed out a window. Tased . . . twice. Ben Northcutt tried to kill me.”

“You have no idea how lucky you are,” he said. “You fell three stories and landed on wire mesh. You’ve got serious lacerations, two Taser burns, a broken fifth metatarsal in your left foot, and a fractured wrist. Honestly, you should buy some lottery tickets when you walk out of here.”

“Are you really a doctor?”

He chuckled at that. “Your family’s waiting. Are you ready for a visit?”

“Okay,” I said, hoping he meant Reagan but wondering if he meant my father. I struggled to sit up. Dr. Weiss put his hands on my shoulders, gently pressing me back, then pushed a button to raise the upper half of the bed. “Where are the cops?”

“They’re waiting too.”

“Get them in here.”

A minute later, Reagan was rushing in and hugging me. “You scared us to death! Are you okay? Tiger Mom wanted to be here, but the hospital only lets two family members in.”

Villaverde and Gorey were on her heels. Pulling up the rear was my father, looking pale and anxious.

“You need to haul Ben Northcutt’s ass into jail,” I said. “He’s insane. He tried to kill me.”

“Tell us what happened,” Villaverde said.

I tried to explain as best I could without mentioning the Thraxton criminal enterprise and Caro’s role in it. “He thought he and Caro and Teddy were running away to start a new life, when my sister didn’t want anything to do with him,” I said at the end. “He admitted he had a fight with Caro the morning she died. He shook her, and she fell and hit her head. He insisted she was okay, that she got up after that, but I told him he killed her. That was when he tried to kill me.”

“Which suggests you were onto something,” Villaverde said. “I wonder how Theo will take the news his wife was ditching him.”

“Theo’s already having the worst day of his life,” Gorey added.

“What are you talking about?”

“Teddy’s gone missing,” my father said.

“His stepmother has vanished, and it looks like she took the little kid with her,” Villaverde explained. “You know anything about that?”

I was stunned. “Ursula’s always been sweet . . . and very drunk. Are you sure she took him?”

“Theo is certain she did. She told him the boy needed a different life.”