“Witch,” says Caitlin, tickling her under the arms, which triggers explosive giggles. “The Masters intuition never fails,” she adds, looking up at me. “You’ve got it bad for her, don’t you?”

“What? Hell, no.”

“Daddy said a bad word!” Annie cries.

“Daddy told a fib,” says Caitlin. “And that’s worse.”

“I think I need a drink.”

The ticket agent announces that first class will begin boarding immediately.

“First love?” Caitlin asks in a casual voice as we move through the mass of passengers funneling toward the gate.

“It’s a long story.”

She nods, her eyes knowing. “If short stuff here goes to sleep on the plane, that’s a story I wouldn’t mind hearing.”

Perfect.

Airplanes work like a sedative on Annie. After drinking a Sprite and eating a bag of honey-roasted peanuts, she curls up next to Caitlin and zonks out. At Caitlin’s suggestion, I move her across the aisle to my seat and, when she begins to snore again, move back across the aisle beside Caitlin.

“You’re going to make me drag it out of you?” she says.

I say nothing for a moment. Certain relationships do not lend themselves to conversational description. Emotions are by nature amorphous. When confined to words, our longings and passions, our rebellions and humiliations often seem melodramatic, trivial, or even pathetic. But if Caitlin is going to help me destroy Leo Marston, she needs to know the history.

“Every high school class has a Livy Marston,” I begin. “But Livy was special. Everyone who ever met her knew that.”

“Marston? She said her name was Sutter.”

“Her maiden name was Marston.”

“Marston . . . Marston. The guy you asked me to check out? The D.A. when Payton was killed? Judge Marston?”

“He’s Livy’s father.”

“God, it’s so incestuous down here.”

“Like Boston?”

“Worse.”

Caitlin calls the flight attendant and orders a gimlet, but this is beyond the resources of the galley. There seems to be a nationwide shortage of Rose’s Lime Juice. She orders a martini instead.

“So,” she says, “what made her so special?”

“How many people were in your graduating class?”

“About three hundred.”

“Mine had thirty-two. And most of those had been together since nursery school. It was like an extended family. We watched each other grow up for fourteen years. And those thirty-two people did some extraordinary things.”

“Such as?”

“Well, there’s high school, and then there’s life. Out of thirty-two people we had six doctors, ten lawyers, a photographer who won the Pulitzer last year—”

“And you,” she finishes. “Best-selling novelist and legal eagle.”