And then he met Danielle, and they seemed well suited for each other.

“I am sorry to bother you so early,” he says in his deep voice. “Especially after what you and Julia went through yesterday. How is she?”

Iris loves Mike a little for asking How is she? instead of Is she OK? because no, she’s not OK, she won’t be, not for a while, and that is part of the awfulness of this. “She’s not great. But she’s mostly worried about Ned. And you. How are you? And Peter?” She wonders if Peter ever noticed his father was dating someone and chides herself for her unkindness.

She sets the coffee down in front of Mike.

“Iris,” Mike says, “I have loved twice in my life and both times she has died.” He says her name I-ris, a very clear break between the syllables, the I always longer than it needs to be. It irritates her usually, but not now. He looks very directly at her, as if she will have an answer to his grief. “I should know what to do, right? I don’t.”

She takes Mike’s hand. “I am so sorry.”

“To lose her this way…I cannot understand it.”

“They’ll find who did it.”

“I can’t worry about myself right now.” He sips at the coffee. “I wanted to see how you all were, but I need your help with Ned.”

“What?”

“His father is coming from London. An investor friend of mine with a private jet there is getting him here this morning.”

Iris tries not to make a face. She dislikes Danielle’s first husband, Gordon, a man she met once or twice, briefly, when he came to Austin to visit his son. He’s a banker, as well, with an international practice covering Europe and Africa. Iris does not understand how he could have a child and leave him behind in another country, put his job before his kid. It’s beyond her. But right now she tells herself to be generous. Of course Gordon is coming here. He must.

“Does he need a place to stay?”

“No. He will stay at Danielle’s house. But he wants to take Ned back to London.”

She hadn’t even thought of that in the insanity of the last twenty-four hours. Ned can’t just live alone in his dead mother’s house. The house will have to be sold. Presumably, being a lawyer, Danielle had a will. She thinks how Julia will react. “Of course Gordon does,” she says.

“Yes, and I am sure Gordon means well, but Ned is in no emotional shape to leave everyone he loves and knows. He is upset.”

“What does he want to do?”

“He tells me that Julia has invited him to live with you. We could not sleep last night and he told me this.”