When I wasn’t watching Investigation Discovery or 48 Hours or Dateline, I was blowing through every Netflix series and HBO doc I could find. My absolute favorite show was Power, Privilege and Justice. It had run for nine seasons through most of the 2000s, and now truTV showed reruns. It was hosted by this dandyish-looking Vanity Fair writer named Dominick Dunne and covered a lot of famous cases, like the Menendez brothers and Andrew Cunanan. But there were also really obscure ones I never heard of before.

That’s how I first came across Claudine Longet. And that’s how I eventually wound up in Aspen with a different Claudine. My Claudine.

And Henry. Poor, poor Henry.

Henry

It had been three weeks since the hospital. He wasn’t feeling any better.

Turning off the shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist and, with a swipe of his fist, cleared enough fog from the mirror to see his reflection. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back, damp. He hadn’t been sleeping well. The dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises. Claudine wasn’t happy about that. She’d left a tube of her concealer out on the counter of the double vanity. He squeezed a dime-sized amount onto the back of his hand and dabbed it on.

She brought her outfit for the party to the office, efficient to the core, but he decided to go home to change. He hoped a midday shower would give him energy, increase his focus. It didn’t. It just made him wet.

Why was she making him go through this again?

Their unspoken pact that had lasted over twenty years, broken without so much as a conversation.

Three weeks earlier, they were meeting a client couple, the Flynns, at the seasonal Nobu pop-up restaurant at the St. Regis. This would have been their biggest sale in more than a year, an eight-million-dollar chalet near Buttermilk. Claudine had brought the papers and planned for them to sign during dessert. Henry didn’t make it that far. Just as they arrived at the restaurant, as he held the door open for Claudine, she told him the Lions had called and asked her to take the Montague House listing—and she had accepted. So casual. Just like that. Like it was no big deal. The moment she said the words, his chest tightened. He barely heard the conversation through the appetizers. All he could do was try to process what she’d told him.