“Right, but those were unusual circumstances. I asked Caroline, ‘Is he a good father to Teddy?’ She said he was. I asked if Theo ever hit her . . .” Her eyes teared up again, and she grabbed another tissue.

“What did she say?” I leaned forward. This was important.

“She said no, but that wasn’t the point. Then she asked what would I do if I found out someone I loved had committed a terrible crime?”

“What crime?”

“I don’t know. I told her my faith would guide me, that if a person truly had remorse, that if they had truly changed, I would forgive.”

“You’re a better person than I am, Jude. I’m an eye for an eye.”

“Violence begets more violence,” she said. “But if a person has no remorse . . .” She swallowed hard. “Caroline told me Theo had been lying to her as long as she’d known him.”

“About what?”

“I can’t say what. It would embarrass her.” Jude rubbed her temples. “It wasn’t a crime, though. She never told me what that was supposed to be.”

“She found out Theo killed his first wife.” I put it together in a heartbeat. Growing apart was one thing—Caro was a fairly devout person, and she wasn’t going to get a divorce unless there was a reason—but discovering her husband was a killer would’ve been the end of everything.

“I brought up practical things to her,” Jude said. “I said she wouldn’t want to give up her beautiful town house in a divorce. She told me she wouldn’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“She said her in-laws were on her side. Her father-in-law owns the house . . .”

“I thought he gave it to them as a wedding gift?”

“He didn’t sign it over, apparently,” Jude said. “He controls the purse strings. He told Caroline that the house was hers and Teddy’s, and Theo could go back to living at one of the hotels.”

I hadn’t stopped to think about what Theo’s motive might be for killing Caroline. His family was the one with money, but that big cushion of cash wasn’t actually his.

“What about Teddy?” I asked. “Who’d get custody?”

“Caroline wanted full custody, but Theo said he’d fight her for it. He told her . . . he said she was an unfit mother.”

In that moment, every nerve ending in my body was electrified. I wanted to kill Theo with my bare hands.

“I kept something from you yesterday,” Jude said. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

“What?”

“That woman you overheard me talking to, Adinah Gerstein? We were discussing Caroline.”

“So you did call her crazy.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Jude’s expression was horrified. “But Caroline was struggling, there’s no doubt of that.”

“Struggling how?”