Caitlin and our children, who’d flown in the day before, came up, and I introduced them. Again the Rosedales’ faces brightened with intense, eager smiles. Gabriella gushed over my son and daughter, complimenting us on their looks. Even Alec became effusive in his mild fashion, spreading his hands and making an elegant speech to the effect that even though both my parents had sadly departed, he hoped the younger generations would maintain the tradition of family friendship with the Rosedales, especially now that Marco and I had become so close.

The vague discomfort I felt throughout all this I attributed, at the time, to my lingering sense of treachery toward Renata. Later, after confirming with my siblings that the Rosedales had indeed never been especially close friends of my parents, I wondered if the whole exchange hadn’t been contrived as some kind of performance on their part—a piece of theater for the benefit of the various social circles represented in that room, engineered to demonstrate that our family was firmly in the Rosedale camp, just in case Marco’s story got out.

No doubt I was guilty of some grandiosity myself in this conjecture. But it played into something I’d been thinking about ever since my conversation with Marco on the phone. He’d been elated, understandably, and I didn’t begrudge him that. But it was obvious to me that he didn’t seriously believe Julia was any kind of closet Nazi or anti-Semite, and that he knew he’d won his battle on what amounted to a clumsy choice of words. I didn’t even mind that, in itself. What bothered me was that he seemed perfectly okay with it. I wanted him to at least put on a show of wishing he could have had an opportunity to win by fairer means. But apparently it didn’t trouble him in the least that the question of what happened in that hotel room had been answered by means of legal transactions and maneuvers, aided by a threat of blackmail, rather than the diligent proving or uncovering of an objective truth.