“At the circus I found out that Esmé likes to kill the men we love… a sort of revenge against Cecile. She started with Émile. Then there was Desmond, Peter, and Todd.” Lara bent down to pick at a blade of grass and let the last name hang in the air. She didn’t want to be looking at her mother when she asked her what she knew she had to ask. “Do you want to tell me something about Peter Beaumont?”

Lara gazed over to find her mother staring up at the sun coming down through the trees. The cicadas—the soundtrack of a Virginia summer—were fading in and out. Audrey looked to be absorbing everything—the story, the sun—like it was precious. It was such a serene setting, the green hills lush and ripe.

“He and Jason were in the band together. They were best friends. I met Jason first, but when Peter walked in a room…” She paused, lost in thought. “I’ve never loved anyone like that in my life, Lara.” She looked over at Lara. “Never.” She took a deep breath, like she needed it to keep going. “But Peter was a wandering soul, untamed. Not unlike Todd.”

Audrey stopped to let that sink in. As if a layer of an onion was peeling away, Lara was seeing a side of her mother that she’d never imagined. Her mother picked at something on her shorts. Lara was sure nothing was there, it was just giving Audrey something to do as she unpacked her history, something she’d tightly stored away from everyone.

“I knew from the beginning that he was wild. For the summer that year, it had been a bit of a triangle—Jason, Peter, and me—but I knew they were going to Los Angeles after Thanksgiving. I’d be left here.” Finally, Audrey put her hands on her hips. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time—forever—but I didn’t want to ruin any part of your relationship with Jason. You clung to him so tightly. Peter is your biological father, Lara, not Jason. The day before he went missing, I had told Peter that I was pregnant. Honestly, when he disappeared, I just thought he’d bolted. Like you, I was confused. And until Todd went missing, I think some part of me always thought Peter had left to avoid the responsibility. We didn’t know what to think. Jason and I were both devastated. The police were involved, of course, but they always thought he’d just up and left. His mother pushed them for years, finally getting him declared dead in the early 1980s.”

“You didn’t think it was like Desmond Bennett? No one did the math?”