Sometimes I wonder if Travis already had a plan before he made that visit, or if finding me in the dining room had gotten him thinking, opening his mind to newer and darker possibilities. Perhaps he had run right home to Daddy and told him how he had found a perfect scapegoat. How he had found a way for the Gables to get away with murder.

I do sort of wish I had told my mother about the encounter. Maybe then she would have been more suspicious when Edmund Gable called her out of the blue and asked her to clean his house. But even that’s unlikely. She would have had to know that Travis was Edmund’s son for the alarm bells to ring. How would she know that? I certainly didn’t.

So Travis needs to pay and so does Jessica and so does Edmund . . . and I have to find a way to make that happen before Micah can stop me.

But what about Lander? Am I really so ready to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card? Based on what? Am I giving him brownie points because he doesn’t like his father very much? Because he had a sad childhood? So did Travis. So did 80 percent of the people I’ve ever met in my entire life. But most of those people don’t go around setting up innocent people for murder.

But it’s Lander.

I wince at the dreamy tone of my own internal voice. Outside the wind is picking up as we drive into Harlem, blowing through the hair of the gentrifiers and old-timers alike. It’s oddly unifying. White, black, or brown, today we’re all going to have a bad-hair day.

It’s odd, but I actually have a lot in common with the Gable boys. Deceased or absentee mothers, a difficult childhood, a chip on the shoulder. But while I can kind of relate to Lander, Travis seems like he’s from a different species.

The cab moves out of the nicer areas of Harlem and closer to my neck of the woods. Now the cars on the side of the road have all seen better days. Scattered glass can be seen on the pavement where one of those cars was once parked. The chain stores that have moved into South Harlem are a lot harder to find here, up near 155th Street. There are fewer leaves blowing around and more litter. The change of scenery reminds me of how separate I am from the world I’m invading.

With a little restructuring of my plan I can protect Lander from the worst of it. But still, when all’s said and done Lander will have lost his brother and his sister-in-law. Not necessarily to death, but definitely to a kind of obliteration. And since I’m going to ruin his father, he may be unemployed in addition to being called upon to raise his niece and nephew.