I hadn’t been there since I’d left the company, more than two years earlier. Caroline’s domain hadn’t changed. The walls were a calming blue, and the furnishings were nineteenth-century vintage and in perfect condition. The desk was elaborately carved mahogany with snarling lion faces and clawed feet; it had a dozen drawers, each marked with a different carved flower. There was an elaborate teak cabinet and a glass-fronted bookcase, and a curious Victorian sofa, reupholstered in white satin, with two plush seats facing away from each other. It felt like a perfect metaphor for my wife: everything under lock and key, and nothing ever confronted directly.

I was staring at photographs when I heard a sound from the doorway. I turned and saw Hugo Laraya watching me. He was the first friend I’d made in law school and still the best. My father, always swift to appraise a person’s value, snapped Hugo up immediately when he graduated, placing him at the white-shoe New York firm that Thraxton International kept on retainer. I couldn’t blame Hugo for taking the job, but it had put up a wall between us, especially after I left the company.

“They told me you were skulking around in here,” Hugo said.

“I’m sure my family has every security camera in the building trained on me.”

“C’mon, Theo. You wouldn’t believe how often your dad says he wishes you’d come back to work here.”

Hugo leaned against the doorframe with the insouciance of an otter who’d been hired to shoot a Dolce & Gabbana advertisement. The top of his dark mop of hair rose just above my shoulder, though he usually wore a hat, carefully styling his silhouette to appear taller. He was of Filipino descent, but he embodied an impeccable, Waspy elegance that graduated into dandyism. That day, he was decked out in a gray Saville Row suit with a pale-olive fedora and patterned pocket square. We were the same age, but he always seemed older. It was probably the hats.

“I always wondered how Caroline managed to accomplish so much with such a pristine desk,” Hugo said. “This room looks more like a stage set than an office.”

“How have you been?”

“Fine,” Hugo said. “You know what? I’m going to grab a coffee. I’ll be right back.”

He set a large ivory envelope embossed with the name of his firm—Casper Peters McNally—on Caroline’s desk and left the room.

The invitation was too enticing to pass up. I knew Hugo was an excellent lawyer, so this wasn’t a slip-up. There was a reason he’d left the room, even if he was legally barred from telling me what it was. I slid the pages out of the envelope.

The first document was a request for a restraining order to prevent me from taking my son out of New York.