Dermot, in fact, had first made his way down from New York to Washington, D.C., on family business: he’d been delivering a new deep-blue Cadillac to a buyer in the capital, and whatever was supposed to have happened on that errand (he’d once told her the buyer hadn’t shown up; another time he’d said the buyer had changed his mind when he saw the cream-colored interior), Dermot remained in Washington, kept the car, and got the job at the Westmeyer Hotel. He met Teresa not long after, in the diner that sat between the hotel and the insurance company where she worked. He courted her in that Cadillac. He allowed her to place a Virgin Mary on the dashboard, though he’d stopped going to church years before, and after they married he moved her into the suite the hotel had given him to live in. He had no communication with his family whatsoever—at least none that Teresa was aware of. Then one day, somewhere in between the births of Matt and Katherine, the Cadillac vanished from its parking spot in front of the hotel. “We should call the police,” Teresa said, and Dermot said no, they should definitely not call the police. “What about your family?”

“What about them?” he shot back. “You think they don’t know where that car is? You think they don’t know where I am?”

And so no one was called, and the car was never mentioned again.