Slowly, Manfred drew the plan for the ground floor, with many erasures. It contained the formal living room, a dining room, a family den, the kitchen and pantry, and a game room, plus two bathrooms; one off the game room, and one between the kitchen and the family den, with a doorway onto the hall. “The terrace and pool are off the French doors in the family den,” he said, “but there’s also a hall that runs the length of the house and leads right out to it. Of course, that’s where the pool house is, to the right of the swimming pool. There’s a U-shaped driveway out front for visitors, and a driveway that goes all the way behind the house for family. I guess there’s a garage back there. I forget.”

“You have a good memory,” Olivia said.

“I’d never been in a house like that.” He could remember how impressed he’d been and how he’d struggled to look as though he took all this absolutely for granted. He remembered, too, how hard all this space and opulence had been to reconcile with Rachel Goldthorpe, who had been such a comfortable woman to be with, just like any grandmother he’d see at a church or a Denny’s.

“Okay, what about the second floor?” Olivia looked at him expectantly.

“I’m sketchier on that. I just walked through really quickly. I didn’t want to scare the daughters, so I was paying more attention to having a good conversation with them, telling them a little about my own family, trying to put them at ease.”

“Someday I’d like to hear about that,” Olivia said.

“When you tell me about yours, I’ll tell you about mine,” Manfred said. Olivia gave him a very hard look, and he knew he’d hit a nerve.

“Do the best you can with the second floor,” she said, pointing at the pad and paper.

So Manfred tried. “Okay, you go up the front stairs . . . then you reach a landing, and turn, and up more stairs. There’s the open area over the entryway, which is two-story, and the first room on the right you come to is Lewis’s room—when he was a kid. It has its own bathroom. The girls’ rooms are next, and there’s a bathroom in between ’em. Of course, they’re not being used now. The other side of the hall is kind of the grown-up side. First, there’s Morton’s office. Or maybe she called it a library? It has a little bathroom. Next to it, and huge, is the master bedroom. I just peeked in there. Some of the windows overlook the side of the house, and there’s a balcony, a big one, overlooking the pool at the back and the pool house. Where Lewis is staying now.”

“How long ago was this?”