That stops me. And I understand it now. Nicholas didn’t run me through his story to present himself in a better light or to see if I’d engage with him. He told me so I’d lead him here, exactly to this place, where he could put his fury out there. He wanted to wound me with it. He wanted to wound me with the harm Owen caused—with the price of what he chose to do.

“I think it’s his hypocrisy that I find the most staggering,” he says. “Considering that Ethan knew exactly what I was doing and what I wasn’t doing for my employers. He knew more than my own children. In part because he knew about encryption and computers. In part because he and I became close and I let him in. Let’s just say he helped me do certain things. That’s how he was able to cause the trouble that he did.”

I don’t know how to argue with that. I don’t know how to argue with Nicholas about any of this. This is how he sees himself, as a family man, as a wronged man. And he sees Owen as the man who wronged him, which makes Owen just as guilty as he is. I can’t argue with something so intrinsic to his understanding of himself. So I decide not to. I decide to go another way.

“I don’t think you’re wrong about that,” I say.

“No?” he says.

“The one thing I know about my husband is that he would do anything for his family. And that’s who you were to him, so I imagine he was quite involved with whatever you asked him to be involved with.” I pause. “Until he decided he couldn’t be anymore.”

“I’d already been working for my employer for a long time when Ethan came into my daughter’s life,” he says. “For other clients too, mind you. I continued to fight for people you’d approve of, I still work for those clients, though I’m sure you’re less interested in my good deeds.”

I don’t say anything. He isn’t looking for me to say anything. He is looking to make his point, which is when he starts to get there.

“Ethan blamed me for what happened to Kate. He blamed the men I worked for when they had nothing to do with it. She was working for a Texas Supreme Court judge, a very influential Texas Supreme Court judge? Did you know that?”

I nod. “I did.”