Marco seemed unable to answer. He gazed blankly at her, the hawkish set of his features lending a helpless, irrelevant dignity to the shock imprinted on them. I felt his discomfort so acutely that I found myself trying to think up some innocuous explanation for the message. Wrong number . . . Different Marco Rosedale . . . Crank call from an old friend with a twisted sense of humor . . . Before anything plausible came to mind, however, he spoke. His voice was surprisingly calm.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ll tell you the whole story. I was hoping not to have to burden you with it, but I see that’s no longer an option.” He turned to his daughter. “You too, sweetheart.”

He beckoned them into the living room. Erin retreated tactfully down the hallway to the basement stairs and I went up to the spare room. I remember feeling surprised and impressed by the stoic courage he appeared to have found in that excruciating moment. But I feared for him all the same. The voice on the machine, so familiar to me and yet so changed, had disturbed me profoundly. It seemed to me Marco was up against a more formidable antagonist than he, or I, had quite realized.

Part Two

Part Two

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LATER THAT FALL my mother had a serious stroke. I flew to England to be with her and my siblings. She’d left instructions not to be kept on life support, and after nine days she died in the hospital.

As far as I can tell, the emotions prompted in me by these unexpected events had no impact on my reactions to Marco’s story as it continued unfolding, so at the risk of appearing callous I will keep them to myself. In a more practical sense, however, the events themselves did have some effect. For one thing, they brought me to London.