It was a grand place for a man who’d inherited a motel chain that stretched across America and turned it into a global luxury hotel brand. At one end was a dark wood desk as immobile as a bank vault, elaborately carved with lion heads and claws and intertwined flowers. The desk chair was carved wood as well, but lacquered and gilded so the winged goddesses that formed the armrests looked ready to take flight. Still, they couldn’t match the grandeur of the pair of ancient terra-cotta rams guarding a cabinet by the window; they were at least thirty-five hundred years old and obviously belonged behind glass in a museum.

“You haven’t set foot in this office in a year,” my father grumbled. “And when you stop by, you go see your sister but not me? What has Juliet ever done for you?”

“She’s made me completely miserable,” I admitted. “But I needed to talk to her about Caroline.”

“Juliet’s the last person I’d ask about her. She was like a scorpion with a kitten.”

“She told Caroline about Mirelle,” I said quietly.

I expected him to be furious. My father had a strict code about family secrets, and Juliet had violated his cardinal rule. But he appeared deflated, resting his elbows on the desk and cradling his head in his hands for a moment. “I knew it had to be either Juliet or Ursula.”

“You knew?” I asked, stepping closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry, son. I was hoping things would work out between you and Caroline. I didn’t want to meddle.” He sighed. “Caroline asked me about your first wife. She was upset, but she wouldn’t tell me how she found out.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was a mistake, that it wasn’t a legal marriage. I thought that was what she was upset about. I was wrong. She asked me how the girl died.”

I felt as if I were trapped in a vat of acid; I was burning up, inside and out. “You told her?”

“I said drugs were involved, that you were high when it happened. I tried to be vague about details.” His head drooped, as if his neck had just decided to quit its job. “Don’t hate me. I ended up giving her a version of the truth, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What version?”

“I told her you’d gone through a terrible time when you were a student in Berlin. She already knew about the drugs. I think she knew you used to self-harm.” He glanced at me, as if for confirmation; I nodded. “I told her you got involved with a terrible woman who made everything worse. And that one night, you were playing some kind of . . . uh, game . . . together, and she died.”