They parked by a playground buried in a neighborhood miles from Carly’s house. At the end of the story, Marcelline leaned back in her seat, hands folded over her lips, deep in thought. “He’ll come looking for the painting. The first place is your house. Shit.”

“But my mom . . .”

“I know.”

When Marcelline reached for her phone, Carly felt a pang for her own. Not having it was like not having her hair. She knew she could live without it, but it felt really weird.

So she stared out the window, listening to Marcelline’s side of the call.

“S? Hey, it’s me. Sorry I hung up on you. . . . Yeah, I’m fine. Fine-ish anyway. . . . I don’t know.” She smiled at something the other person said. “Yeah. I know. Um, I need you to do something. You’re not going to like it. I think I might need you to get in touch with Owen Haig for me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Boxes. That was what allowed Samantha to have both her career and a life.

She disconnected from the call with Marcelline and looked at the collection of boxes that lined her shelves and decorated her tables and spare desk space. There were even more of them at home—little jeweled ones, some with sweetly plinking music, big decoupaged hatboxes, glass, inlaid wood, onyx, resin, leather-covered pressboard. They were all empty.

People thought they were knickknacks. Her odd little collector’s fetish. Just what you ought to get Samantha for her birthday or Hanukkah. But that wasn’t it at all. They served as pretty prompts to remind her of their metaphorical counterparts, lovely little warnings for her to never forget how all of this worked.

The magic of compartmentalization wasn’t in that it kept things separate. That was merely the practical function of containment. The separation let a whole lot of people stay in her life because they thought she worked in hospital public relations. But it also let the president of France’s personal secretary have her number in his phone under the guise of a plumbing company. It kept scores of wealthy and influential people from ever knowing they were often talking about the same person when they gossiped, in lowered voices, about knowing someone who could do this or get that. It let her help the FBI some days and thwart them on others. It let her talk to her mother three times a week.

No, the true blessing of the psychological box was in the lid. The idea, the image of it, was a simple mnemonic device that forced a pause into her decision making. When Samantha was about to change something, to open a lid as it were, there was the question What does it mean to pry this open, to risk getting this mixed in with something else?