The smile faded. He wiped his hands on a rag he pulled out of his overalls. It seemed to hold all his attention. “I can’t think when that was. We never used email much.” His Irish accent was strong, as if he’d just come over from Belfast. Thirty-plus years of living in Queens hadn’t softened it at all.

“I know you got a message from Caro the day of her funeral,” I said. “I have to see it.”

He frowned at me, his eyes squinting in concentration as if taking in a problem he could never solve. “How could she email after she died?” He got to his feet.

“She used a service called . . . never mind. Caroline set up some messages to go out in case she died. I got one. You did too.”

“I don’t have much use for that internet nonsense. But I can check.” He tossed the rag on the ground and turned on his heel.

We went through a door that led to a small room at the side of the building. His office was exactly the way I remembered it. There was a small plywood desk and a pair of towering bookcases he’d cobbled together himself. His computer was an ancient beige plastic desktop. It actually screeched when he started it, like a pterodactyl was hiding inside.

“This might take a minute,” he muttered, putting on his reading glasses.

On the wall was a framed portrait of my mother on her wedding day. Underneath it was a shadow box with a single red rose. I recognized it immediately. It was one of the flowers that had topped my mother’s coffin. My mother had died of cancer just before Teddy was born. I couldn’t blame my father for that. But I hated him for everything else.

“Okay, it’s fired up,” he said.

I edged around the desk so I could see his screen. “Go to your email.”

Another minute ticked by while his Hotmail account loaded.

“You still use that?” I asked.

“Why not? It works.”

There was nothing from Osiris’s Vault in his inbox. True to his minimalist spirit, my father had only a dozen emails in the folder, so it wasn’t hard to tell. “Check your spam,” I said.

He clicked on that folder. It was empty.

“You must have another email address.”

“This is the only one.” He made a startled yelp. “Hold on, there’s another for the business. Let me try that.”

I waited, staring at the walls because it took him forever to log in. “Sorry, I don’t usually use this account,” he said. I ignored him, examining the framed photographs on his desk. There was one of our family together when I was a toddler and Caro was six, and another of my sister and me hugging.

“Did you put these photos up because Caro died?” I asked him.

“No, they’ve been there awhile now.”