He nods again, and flecks of dandruff fall onto the metal tray below the screen. “I’d gone there to fulfill the pact Viola and I made. But once I was there, and she told me about Lincoln, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. Not without thinking about it a lot more first. So I diluted some morphine to look like a big dose and injected her in the inguinal vein. She went to sleep, and I left.”

“What about the tape she made for Henry?”

“I took that with me. She’d told me what was on it. I went to my office and watched it anyway, all the while thinking about the enormous secret she had kept from me all those years. Lincoln.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“I left the tape at my office and drove back to Cora’s house. Viola was the only one there, and she was sleeping soundly. I was surprised, given the relative mildness of the dose I’d given her. I stood there and watched her breathing and tried to see the young woman I’d fallen in love with all those years ago. But I couldn’t. Anyway, as I waited for her to stir, I heard a sound. A whirring. It seemed to be coming from the camera Henry had left there, but there was no red light on. Still, I walked over to the tripod to check, and that’s when I realized the camera was on. On and recording.”

The Dumpster tape, I think with a chill. You flat-out lied about that.

“And the lack of red light told you someone had set it up that way? To secretly record what happened while you were there that night?”

He nods. “Exactly. And I panicked. As quickly as I could, I unloaded that tape and hurried back to my car.”

“Viola was still alive?”

“Absolutely.”

“And then?”

“I went back to my office and watched that second tape. It had started recording about ten minutes before I got to the house.”

“You think Cora started it?”

“That was my guess. Now I wonder if it was Lincoln.”

“It could have been.”

Dad closes his eyes, thinking back to that night. “The tape was set on slow speed, so it could record six hours. My whole first visit with Viola was there, but that wasn’t what shocked me. Five minutes after I left the first time, your mother walked into that sickroom like Donna Reed in a goddamn movie. I saw everything she did, heard everything she and Viola said. That was when I learned that Peggy had known about Viola back in 1968. That she’d even helped her to leave town, sent her money all those years.”

“So what did you do then?”

“I went home and pretended I knew nothing.”

“What? What about the tape?”