“He admitted that Theo’s first wife died. He said drugs were involved.” As I spoke, I realized I didn’t want to get the old man in trouble. I didn’t exactly trust him, but I also didn’t want to ruin his life. He needed to tell the cops his story his way. “He also told me Theo came home a day earlier than anyone realized from his last trip. He went to his house early the morning my sister died.”

“Look, Deirdre, that’s not why we wanted you to come in,” Villaverde said. “We want to help you out, but we need some information first.”

“About what?”

“You told us your father abused your mother,” Gorey said. “But you never said a word about the fact that you tried to kill your father.”

Time came to a screeching halt. I could only stare at him, my heart booming like a cannon in my ears. There was no point in belligerently asking what he meant. I couldn’t pretend to be innocent.

“I was protecting my mother,” I said. “She’d written a letter saying her husband was going to kill her. I found it by accident, and I . . .”

“You what?”

“I had to help her.” My voice came out in choked bursts. I’d grown up in a house where the shadow of violence always loomed. For as long as I could remember, it was a place where a casual slap could land on you for not moving quickly enough. The two years Reagan had mostly lived with us had been an oasis of calm, because my parents never behaved like that around other people. But when we were on our own, without eyes on us, our house felt like a feral place. When I was fifteen, things went badly at my father’s business, and our homelife really went downhill.

“You stabbed him with a steak knife,” Gorey said. “He had organ damage. He could’ve died.”

Stop being so dramatic, Caro had told me back then. This is just what they do. But I hadn’t taken her advice. The week I found the letter, our mother had been wearing a scarf around her neck every day, which was odd. One night, she slipped it off without thinking, and I caught sight of the necklace of bruises circling her pale throat. That was when I’d gone to the kitchen and disappeared a knife into an old tea towel. I told myself I’d act next time I heard them fighting in their bedroom. I hadn’t seen the worst of my father’s violence, but I’d heard it.

“He was drunk,” I said. “He was beating my mother.”