“I had to pick Caro up from there once.” He didn’t elaborate on why. “His family was well off. They had a vacation home in the Poconos too.”

“I’ll give the police every lead we have,” Theo said. “But if Caroline mentioned High Falls, I think we should head there.”

We took separate cars, me in my father’s and Theo following us. We were mostly silent heading out of the city. It had been a decade since I’d driven anywhere with my father, and it felt uncomfortable because it was familiar and strange at the same time. It was like the adult me had been transported into the past, only instead of stressing about my parents’ fighting, we were united in our fears for Teddy.

“What happened?” I asked finally. “The time you had to pick Caro up at Ben’s house, I mean.”

“She didn’t come home for her birthday. Two weeks later, she still hadn’t stopped by. It wasn’t like her,” he said.

“You talked on the phone?”

“Aye, there were some short chats. But very much on the surface, about work and the like.” He was quiet for a moment. “She never said anything was amiss.”

“What happened?”

“I thought, ‘This is too strange.’ Your mother believed I was overreacting. She’d met Ben and liked him. But I didn’t think much of him, to be honest.”

“Too macho?”

“Too much of a show-off. All these tales of derring-do.”

“What happened when you got to the house?”

“Caro was fit to be tied. ‘That bastard stole my work,’ she told me.”

“Ben stole her work? Wasn’t he a Pulitzer Prize finalist?”

“Apparently that very story was one Caro reported on and wrote. She got no credit for it.” He shook his head. “I thought she might strangle him, but he wasn’t in the house. She told me to wait, packed up her things, and that was it. Didn’t even leave him a note.”

“Stone cold.” I stared at the road. “She never told me anything.”

“Crawleys are good at keeping secrets, bad at asking for help.”

“What I don’t understand is why she would have anything to do with him again.”

“He was a creep, but I don’t think anything violent happened between them back then.” He was quiet for a moment. “You wondered the same thing about your mother.”

That was true, but my father and I had never talked about it. “I don’t understand how she could forgive you. I thought she’d leave you, but she never did.”

“I don’t understand why she didn’t leave me either,” he said. “I was a mess. I didn’t deserve her.”

“Why did you hit her?” That was something I’d always wanted to understand.

“I’ve spent a long time asking myself the same thing,” he said. “When I first went to therapy, it was all about controlling anger. Count to thirty, breathe deep, focus your mind on something else, that kind of thing. But that was like a bandage over the problem. The issue wasn’t the anger. It was that I felt entitled to an outlet for my anger.”

His words resonated with me on a deep level. We’d never talked like this to each other. Maybe it helped that we could look at the road and not each other.

“How do you know you’ve changed?” I asked.

“I hope I have,” he said. “I meet with a group every week. I don’t drink anymore, or go to bars, so no more bar fights. The last few years with your mother were really good, but she was sick, so that changed our dynamic. I wonder if I ever got involved with another woman what would happen. Part of me is too afraid to find out.”

It had been almost four years since my mom had died. I hadn’t realized my father was living as solitary an existence as I was. Part of it was that I didn’t trust other people, but I didn’t trust myself either. Hookups I could handle. Relationships were terrifying.

“If someone hurts me, I want to kill them,” I admitted.

“That’s because you’re like me.” He sighed. “I used to hate my father. He was the cause of so much misery in the lives of people I loved. I dreamed of killing him.”

“He beat your mother?” I’d never heard this story before.

“He did. And me, and my brother.”

“Did you ever take him on?”

“When I was seventeen,” my father said. “I tackled him, and he beat the hell out of me. Then he threw me out of the house.”

It was twisted of me, but I laughed so hard at that tears came to my eyes. The similarities between my father and me had always been clear, even when I wanted to deny them.

“Yeah, you enjoy stories about me getting my arse kicked,” he commented.

“I didn’t mean it that way . . .”

“When you came at me with that knife, that was the thing that changed me,” he said. “I know you thought it was because you nicked my liver and I got sepsis. But it was the realization I’d turned into my father. That was the hardest truth I ever faced.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. We were off the highway now, on a scenic country road, passing elegant nineteenth-century houses with gingerbread gables and turrets. It was tough to make out numbers and signs in the dark.

“I need to slow down,” he said. “I remember the house was completely hidden from the road. It’s on a large patch of land with a creek at the back. The house was a bungalow with a large addition—a sidesplit, I guess. There’s a screened-in porch at the back.”

“Great recall, but you said it’s completely hidden from the road. Do you remember any signs?”

“There was one for a restaurant,” he said. “A big white board. There was a house across the road, on a much higher parcel of land. They had a couple of barky dogs and an electric fence.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”

We kept driving, Theo on our tail. We passed a house on the right that was elevated high above the road.

“Stop,” I said. “I didn’t see the driveway, but this could be the right area.”

We drove into a turnoff on the right. Theo followed. We all got out of our cars. The house on the hill had its lights blazing. A pair of huskies watched us from a broad window. One of them yowled, and the other joined in.

“That’s the house,” my father said, pointing to the opposite side of the road.

When I looked carefully, I could make out the openings for a semicircular driveway in between the thick tree line.

“You’re the only one who’s been to the house,” Theo said to my father. “How should we do this?”

“The back porch would be the easiest way to get inside,” my father said.

“I’ll head back there,” Theo said. “I’ll signal you if I need a distraction at the front.”

“The house has a strange layout,” my father answered. “The staircase up is hidden. The door to the cellar’s in an odd place. I need to go in myself.”

“Then we’ll go in, and Deirdre can drive up if we need a distraction,” Theo said.

“This seems like a bad time to tell you I don’t know how to drive,” I admitted.

There was a moment of silence for their dead plan.

“I’ll circle back to the porch with my father,” I said. “I’ll text you if we need a distraction at the front, okay?”

Theo nodded.

“Let us get a head start,” my father said. “I don’t want to get too close to the house until we’re behind it.”

We crossed the road and sidled along the edge of the property. It was quiet, except for the sound of crickets chirping. I was limping in the boot they’d given me at the hospital.

There was no way of knowing how much security Ben had. My hope was that he hadn’t outfitted the place with booby traps.

“Do you think Ursula is with them?” I whispered.

“I hope so,” my father answered. “She might be drunk, but she loves Teddy.”

Behind the house was an expansive yard that sloped down to the creek. On the other side of the water was a golf course, but no one was playing in the dark.

As we crept toward the house, I saw movement inside and heard the crash of Teddy’s steps. He was running.

“Ice cream!” he called out, delighted.

I could hear a man’s voice, but it was indistinct.

My father moved to the screened-in porch, which allowed him to see into the living room. I took the window that peered into the kitchen. Teddy was sitting at the table, greedily devouring a pint of ice cream. “This is my favorite,” he said.

I gestured to my father that we’d found our quarry. I tried the kitchen door, but it had a pair of solid locks on it. My father shook his head silently. He went back to the porch, pulled a box cutter out of his pocket, and slashed the mesh. He unlocked that door and padded up the steps.

“Where’s Mama?” Teddy asked Ben.

“She wants to be with you more than anything,” Ben said. It was a different voice than I’d ever heard come out of his mouth. Kinder, warmer. “But we’ve got each other, so that’s pretty great, right?”

“Sure,” Teddy said. “Where did Ammy go?”

“She stayed in New York,” Ben said. “But she sent you with me because she loves you.”

It was deeply weird, watching Ben act like a caring parental figure. I wasn’t even sure he was pretending. The man who tried to kill me a few hours earlier had a gentle, fuzzy side.

We watched in silent surprise.

“We need to get you ready for bed,” Ben said.

“I forgot my toothbrush,” Teddy noted.