A floating hardwood staircase led to the upper floor. At a glance, I took in the layout: a huge master suite with an adjoining study, a dressing room, and a built-in sauna. Even more than on the ground floor, the glass walls blurred the boundaries between inside and out. The setting was exceptional. You could feel the surrounding forest, hear the babble of the river mingling with the patter of the rain. A covered terrace led to a swimming pool that opened onto the sky and a hanging garden planted with wisteria, mimosa, and Japanese cherry.

For a moment, I almost turned back for fear of what I was about to discover. But now was not the time for stalling. I pushed open the door to the other room and discovered something even more intimate. There were more photographs, but here they were all of me and spanned my life from earliest childhood. I remembered the impression that had struck me earlier, one that had grown more forceful as my investigation progressed: in my search for Vinca, I was also, perhaps especially, looking for myself.

The oldest of the photographs was a black-and-white snapshot: Birth of T., Jeanne-d’Arc Maternity Ward, October 8, 1974. An early example of a selfie. Francis is holding the camera and has his arm around my mother, who is cradling a newborn. And the baby is me.

It was both shocking and obvious. The truth was staring me in the face. I felt a wave of emotion crash over me, and as it ebbed, the catharsis left me dazed. Suddenly, everything was clear—all the pieces fit together—but the realization was tempered with grief. I kept staring at the photo. I looked at Francis and it was like looking in the mirror. How could I have been so blind? I finally understood everything, why I had never truly felt like Richard’s son, why I had thought of Maxime as a brother, why some instinct prompted me to spring into action whenever Francis was attacked.

Not quite knowing what to feel, I sat on the edge of the bed and wiped away my tears. Knowing that I was Francis’s son felt like a burden being lifted from me, but knowing that I would never be able to talk to him left me filled with regrets. One question nagged at me—did Richard know about the family secret, about his wife’s double life? Probably, but I could not be sure. Maybe he had simply buried his head in the sand all these years, oblivious to the reason Annabelle tolerated his countless infidelities.