Jessica already had a mother, of course, but the sanitized version proffered up to her by Tony had been a million miles away from the real one: a redhead who’d ended up with her throat ripped open after a life spent in care homes and seducing men in topless bars.

Tony hadn’t liked to talk about the past. So for a long time, all she’d known about Pamela Arnold—the woman she’d grown up believing was her mom—was that she’d died in a car accident before Jessica and Tony had moved to New York.

She’d found out more about Pamela when she was fifteen. It had been a Wednesday, and Tony had taken her to her favorite Mexican restaurant. They would go there often on weekends but never on a school night, so she’d known something was up.

They’d ordered chicken fajitas and burritos, and when Tony’s margarita had arrived, he’d gulped down half the cocktail in one go. When Jessica had pointed out he had salty frosting stuck to his lips, he’d dabbed at his mouth awkwardly with a napkin, as though he was on a first date. Then he’d told her about her mother and the night she’d died.

The first time he’d laid eyes on Pamela Arnold was at a night class on portraiture techniques. She wasn’t a photographer, like Tony. She’d been booked as the model. Pamela had been pretty, but to Tony, the instant attraction had been about a lot more than just looks. She’d had an energy about her, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on that placed her in a league of her own. They had quickly become inseparable, and Jessica had come along soon after.

She was less than a year old, Tony had said, when the accident had happened. Then he’d told Jessica about the trip to the grocery store, the discovery of the destroyed car, the speculation about what could have caused such a tragic end to a young mother’s life.

Sitting in the restaurant, her burrito half-eaten and completely forgotten about, Jessica had asked Tony if he had any other photos of her mother. Pictures he had taken of her during their photography class or during their own time together. He’d shaken his head, told her he had burned the lot the night Pamela had died. All except one. The photo that was now cracked and creased and curling at the edges and still tucked safely behind the dollar bills in Jessica’s wallet.

But the woman in the photo was not Eleanor Lavelle, and the kid cradled in her arms was not Jessica. Her best guess was “Pamela Arnold” had been one of Tony’s photography clients, and he’d kept a spare print from the family portrait shoot to make his lies more convincing. The extent of his deception took her breath away.