The interviewer, an Asian man in his twenties, gestured at the swan and said something that made Diane laugh. Her smile looked sincere, and her dark eyes glittered with intelligence. She was in her mid-fifties now, like Cab’s mother. She wore her golden brown hair in a sensible bob, shiny but not showy. Simple pearl earrings, but no other jewelry. Her suit was dark – serious, reliable – but her blouse was light blue – friendly, inviting. She kept her hands neatly folded in her lap and her legs pressed together. The entire look had probably been poll-tested.

Cab was surprised at how easily Diane had adopted a public image, because the woman he knew from his past had been a lonely introvert, hiding her emotional wounds. He wondered if her new persona was an act, but he was willing to believe that people didn’t always stay the same as they aged. It had been a long time since he’d seen her. Their paths hadn’t crossed since he spent a week at Birch Fairmont’s house in June ten years earlier, during the summer that changed everything.

The summer that ended on Labor Day in death and blood.

He leaned on the white stone balcony, which was framed by columns that graced the front of the estate. The gardens below were lush with palm trees, weeping willows, gnarled oaks, and overgrown saw palmettos. Bronze sculptures of herons and fish dotted the lawns, and fountains sprayed out of the ponds like canopies. Through the web of greenery, he could just see the asphalt of Bayshore Boulevard beyond the estate walls and the calm water of Hillsborough Bay. They were inside the urban boundary of the Tampa peninsula, but this was a private world, carefully secluded from outside view by a stone wall and thick, carefully pruned hedges.

Even so, politics demanded that Diane invite the media to a meet-and-greet. Voters needed to size up their future governor. Hence the dark suit and sensible heels and understated appearance. Hence the softball questions from sympathetic talk-show hosts about her years as a single mother with a checkbook to balance. Yes, she was rich now, but she hadn’t always been rich, and her life had been marred by more than its share of tragedy.

‘Champagne, darling?’ a sparkling voice asked.

His mother appeared on the balcony, surprising him. Tarla never gave any warning before she dropped into his life. She just appeared and disappeared. They’d arrived separately that evening at Diane’s gated estate. Cab had driven more than 150 miles along Florida’s west coast from his home in the beach town of Naples. Tarla lived much closer to Diane, on the top floor of a Gulf coast condominium in Clearwater half an hour away. He’d been looking for her since he got to the party, but Tarla was good at not being found until she wanted to be found.

‘Sure, why not?’ Cab said.