I meet Charlie’s eyes, answer honestly. “He hasn’t told me much. But he once told me how much I would have liked her,” I say. “He told me we would have liked each other.”

Charlie nods, but he stays quiet. And I can feel all the questions he has about my life with Owen, all the questions about Bailey: about who she is now and what she likes now and how she may still be a little like his lost sister, who he clearly loved. But he can’t ask any of those questions, not without fielding questions of his own, questions for which he doesn’t want to provide answers.

“Look,” he says, “if you want someone to tell you that there’s enough goodwill because of Kristin that my father can get over what happened between him and Ethan, that they can reach some kind of truth, they can’t. He won’t. It doesn’t work like that. My father isn’t over it.”

“I know that too,” I say.

And I do know that. But I’m banking on the fact that Charlie wants to help me anyway. Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d be having a different conversation—a conversation neither of us wants to have about what Owen has done to this family. And to me. We’d be having a conversation that would break my heart wide open.

He looks at me more gently. “Did I scare you earlier?” he says.

“I should be asking you that.”

“I didn’t mean to come at you the way I did. It was just that you surprised the hell out of me,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe how many people come here, stirring up trouble for my father. All these crime junkies who saw the trial coverage on Court TV, who think they know my father, who want autographs. Even all these years later. I think we’re on some criminal enterprise tour of Austin. Us and the Newton Gang…”

“That sounds awful,” I say.

“It is,” he says. “It’s all awful.”

Charlie looks at me, taking me in. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing. I think you’re still hoping for a happy ending. But this story doesn’t end well,” he says. “It can’t.”

“I know it can’t. I’m just hoping for something else.”

“What’s that?”

I pause. “That it doesn’t end here.”

On the Lake

Charlie drives.

We head northwest of the city past Mount Bonnell and into Texas Hill Country. Suddenly I’m surrounded by rolling hills, trees and foliage everywhere, the lake muted outside the car windows, tepid. Unmoving.

The rain abates as we turn down Ranch Road. Charlie doesn’t say much, but he tells me that his parents bought their Mediterranean estate nestled on the shores of the lake a couple of years ago—the year Nicholas got out of prison, the year before his mother died. This was his mother’s dream house, he says, this private retreat, but Nicholas has stayed there since her death, on his own. I learn later that it cost them a cool ten million dollars—this estate which, as I see on a plaque at the foot of the driveway, Charlie’s mother, Meredith, named THE SANCTUARY.

It is easy to see why she has chosen this name. The estate is enormous, wildly beautiful, and private. Entirely private.

Charlie enters a code and the metal gates open to reveal a cobblestone driveway, at least a quarter of a mile long, that slowly winds its way to a small guardhouse. The guardhouse is covered in vines, making it inconspicuous.

The main house is less inconspicuous. It looks like it belongs on the French Riviera—complete with cascading balconies, an antique-tile roof, a stone facade. Most notable are the gorgeous bay windows running at least eight feet tall, welcoming you, inviting you in.

We pull up to the guardhouse and a bodyguard emerges. He is pro-linebacker huge, dressed in a tight suit.

Charlie unrolls the window as the bodyguard bends down, leans against the driver’s-side window. “Hiya, Charlie,” he says.

“Ned. How you doing tonight?”

Ned’s eyes move in my direction and he gives me a small nod. Then he turns back to Charlie. “He’s expecting you,” he says.

He taps on the car’s hood and then goes back into the guardhouse to open a second gate.

We pull through it, drive onto the circular driveway, and stop by the front door.

Charlie puts the car in park and shuts off the ignition. But he doesn’t move to get out of the car. It seems he wants to say something. He must change his mind though—or think better of it—because, without a word, he opens the driver’s-side door and gets out.

I follow his lead and step out of the car into the cool night, the ground slick from the rain.

I start walking toward the front door, but Charlie points to a side gate.

“This way,” he says.

He holds the gate open for me and I walk through it. I wait as he locks the gate behind himself and we start heading down a pathway that runs along the side of the house, succulents and plants lining the path’s edges.

We walk side by side, Charlie on the path’s outer edge. I look into the house—look through those long, French windows—to see room after room, every one of them lit up.

I wonder if it’s all lit up for my benefit—so I can see how impressive the design is, how every detail has been considered. The long, winding hallway is lined with expensive art, with black-and-white photographs. The grand room has cathedral ceilings and deep wooden couches. And the farmhouse kitchen, which wraps around the back of the house, is accented with a terra-cotta floor and an enormous stone fireplace.

I keep thinking how Nicholas lives here alone. What is it like to live in a house like this alone?

The pathway winds around to a checkered veranda, which displays antique pillars and a breathtaking view of the lake—small boats twinkling in the distance, a canopy of oak trees, the cooling calm of the water itself.

And a moat.

This house, Nicholas Bell’s house, has its own moat. It’s a stark reminder that there is no getting in or out of here without explicit permission.

Charlie points at a row of chaise lounges, sitting down in one himself, the lake glistening in the distance.

I avoid meeting his eyes, staring out at the small boats instead. I know why I needed to come here. But now that I’m actually here, it feels like an error. Like I should have heeded Charlie’s warning, like nothing good is waiting inside.

“Take a seat anywhere,” Charlie says.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“He could be a little while,” Charlie says.

I lean against one of the pillars.

“I’m okay standing,” I say.

“Maybe it’s not you that you should be worrying about…”

I turn at the sound of a male’s voice, startled to find Nicholas standing in the back doorway. He has two dogs by his side, two large chocolate Labradors. Their eyes hold tightly on Nicholas.

“Those pillars aren’t as strong as they look,” he says.

I step away from the pillar. “Sorry about that,” I say.

“No, no. I kid, I just kid with you,” he says.

He waves his hand as he walks toward me, his fingers slightly crooked. This thin man with a struggling goatee—frail-looking with those arthritic fingers, his loose-fitting jeans, his cardigan sweater.

I bite on my lip, trying to hold my surprise in check. This isn’t the way I expected Nicholas to look—soft, gentle. He looks like someone’s loving grandfather. The way he talks so softly—with the slow cadence, the dry humor—he reminds me of my own loving grandfather.

“My wife bought those pillars from a monastery in France and had them shipped here in two pieces. A local artisan put them back together, returning them to their original presentation. They’re plenty sturdy.”

“They’re also beautiful,” I say.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” he says. “My wife had a real flair for design. She picked everything that went into this house. Every last thing.”

He looks pained, even speaking of his wife.

“I don’t make it a habit of talking about the workmanship of my home, but I thought you’d appreciate a little history…” he says.

This stops me. Is Nicholas trying to suggest he knows what I do for a living? Could he know? Could there be a leak already? Or maybe I’m the leak. Maybe I said something to Charlie without realizing it. Something that has given us all away.

Either way, Nicholas is in charge now. Ten hours ago, that might not have been the case. But I changed all of that when I arrived in Austin. And now it’s Nicholas’s world. Austin is Nicholas’s world, and I’ve walked us back into it. As if cementing the point, two bodyguards walk outside—Ned and another guy. Both of them are large and unsmiling. Both of them stand right behind Nicholas.

Nicholas doesn’t acknowledge them. Instead he reaches out his hands to take mine. Like we are old friends. What choice do I have? I put my hand out, let him wrap his palms around mine.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you…” he says.

“Hannah,” I say. “You can call me Hannah.”

“Hannah,” he says.

He smiles—genuine and generous. And suddenly I’m more disturbed by that than I am by the idea of him presenting as the opposite. At what point was Owen standing in front of him thinking, Nicholas has to be good? How could he have a smile like that if he wasn’t? How could he have raised the woman who Owen loved?