Livy looks past her to me. “Penn? Would you please tell me what’s going on here?”

I stand mute before her. Tonight’s events have cast us as enemies, but even at this awkward moment part of me remains inside her, linking us in the most primitive way.

“You tell me, Livy.”

“Who broke our windows?”

“I did,” Caitlin says, as though she would welcome another lawsuit.

Livy gives her a glance of disdain. “What’s Lois Lane doing here?”

Caitlin holds up the video camera. “Making home movies, sweet cheeks. I don’t think you’re going to like them.”

“That’s it,” says Franklin. “Get out of here, both of you. Go back inside, Ms. Sutter.”

“Your father was trying to destroy evidence, Livy. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Evidence? You mean those old tax records? Daddy told me the day I got back that he needed to clean out his old files. I helped him because of his bad back.”

Is she really trying to convince me that her motives are pure? Or is she using my presence as an opportunity to try to mitigate her culpability in the presence of Judge Franklin?

“I said this meeting is over,” snaps Franklin.

I take Caitlin’s arm above the elbow and lead her away from the house. Soon we’re in darkness, surrounded by the smells of wet grass and decaying leaves. The pulse in her brachial artery is pounding like a tom-tom.

“What do you think?” she asks.

Instead of answering, I turn back and gaze through the dripping trees at Tuscany. What was once a temple of memory is now alien to me. The gallery that once hosted so many lawn parties now creaks under the tramp of police boots, and the sweet air of the grounds carries the tang of gunpowder. After five generations of seclusion, the world outside the gates has crashed through to Tuscany with a vengeance.

My gaze drifts upward, to the third floor, where a solitary light glows in a high window. Framed in that window is an amorphous shape that confuses me at first, but at last resolves into something human. It’s the harridan head of Maude Marston, once a celebrated beauty, now a wreck, ravaged by emotional pain and by the alcohol she uses to blunt it. As Caitlin takes my arm and pulls me along the drive, I remember Dwight Stone’s penchant for quotes, and I think, What havoc hath he wrought in this great house?

CHAPTER 30