“I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk at the church,” Jude said. Her brown eyes were red rimmed, but otherwise she looked beautiful. She wore a simple black dress and jacket, and her dark curly hair was pinned back in a restrained bun. She wore no jewelry except a small silver crucifix. She’d been born in Haiti but raised in Queens; she and Caro had been best friends since middle school. “Be honest—how are you holding up?”

“Who was that woman?” I asked.

“Adinah runs Diotima,” Jude said. “Caroline gave them a lot of help from the time she was in college.”

I recognized the name immediately—Caro was devoted to the Diotima Civic Society—but I had something else on my mind. “What were you saying about Caro going crazy?” I demanded.

“Oh, no, that wasn’t . . . um, that wasn’t about her. I’m sorry if it sounded that way, Dee.”

“Oh.” I felt foolish. My confrontation with Theo had left me paranoid.

“There is something else that’s going to make you upset with me,” Jude said. “Your father asked me to give you this, and I said I would.”

She held out a small square box made of plain brown paper. It fit in the palm of her hand.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want it,” I said.

“Won’t you even open it?”

“Nope.” I didn’t want anything from my father, ever, and I didn’t plan to explain why. Even though they were close, I was pretty sure my sister had kept Jude in the dark about our father’s true nature. Why else would she still speak with him? “But I need to ask you something. Did you know Theo was married before?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He had a first wife. Caro didn’t mention that?”

Jude’s face was stunned and intrigued all at once. “She never breathed a word to me. Theo’s divorced?” She said the word with horror. Jude was a devout Catholic, and that fact reared its head at the oddest times. I considered showing her Caroline’s message. But we couldn’t talk about it with Thraxton minions nearby.

“No, she’s dead,” I admitted. “I asked Theo about her, and he stormed off.”

“To be fair to him, he’s dealing with a terrible loss.”

“I drove here with Theo, and he basically accused Caro of sleeping with another man.”

“That’s horrible,” Jude whispered. “What exactly did he say?”

“That she was meeting with another guy the morning she died. Can you believe that? It’s so obviously insane.”

“Right.” Jude blinked a couple of times. “Exactly. Insane.”

Her reaction bothered me. It didn’t seem like she thought the idea was that crazy. “Was Caro seeing someone else?”

Jude considered my question. “She never said that, but you know—aside from coparenting Teddy—they were basically living separate lives.”

“Do you remember when that started?”