“Maybe,” she says. “But I had two parents who stayed married and I can tell you that was no walk in the park, either. And Troy’s parents weren’t much better. He’s from West Virginia. He likes to say he was raised by wolves, but I’d trade places with him in a second. His parents were simple people. They didn’t have much, but there’s no shame in that.”

The word hangs there for a moment. “What is there shame in, Emily?”

“What?”

“What would you have changed about your own family?”

I watch her shoulder muscles clench and then settle. Some great weight either landing there or letting her go. “Everything.”

It isn’t hard to follow the shadows in her gaze back to Ohio, to long muffling winters and short, hot summers, taffeta formals at the country club. But of course I’m guessing. Emily is the only one who really knows how big everything is, what it contains, where it still clings.

“One thing.”

“The politeness, I guess. The civility. Ironed linen napkins at every meal. My father had this phrase, ‘Mail your envelope,’ meaning your napkin should be in your lap. ‘Mail your envelope, Emily.’ ” Her voice vibrates with held emotion as she imitates him. Rage, probably, and much more.

It’s a big jump, where my mind goes next, and yet I have to ask. “Did he ever beat you?”

“No.” She doesn’t seem surprised that I’ve opened this door. She might even be relieved. At a certain point, once they get tired enough of holding it, most people want to put down their stories. “Not that.”

“Tell me a little about your father.”

“There’s not much to tell. He worked all the time and lived at the club on the weekends. When he drank too much he’d call me over to the bar and show me off to his cronies. Not the best time.”

“Did you ever ask him to stop?”

Her chin bobs with a kind of fierceness. “I wasn’t raised to acknowledge my own feelings, let alone stick up for myself like that. That’s movie dialogue, not real life.”

“Maybe it’s why you got into acting. So there’d be room to actually say things.”

She shakes her head. Her eyes blaze up. “Do all detectives sound like psychologists?”

She has me there. “A lot of them, yeah. People are interesting.”

“Why are we talking about me instead of Cameron?”

It’s the right question. But the answer is so complicated that it takes me a moment to weigh how much to tell her. “Family systems are revealing. That’s something I’ve learned from this line of work. The more you talk to people, the more you see how generations repeat patterns. Everything fits together, even when it seems not to.”

“And the adoption? How does that work with this theory about families?”