Rebecca, who worked as a paralegal, advised him to consult his attorney and coordinate any transfer with the investigator.

Evan said that was his plan.

I asked whether he believed his mother had done something illegal.

He looked at the house where he had grown up.

“I know she’s frightened,” he said.

“I don’t know yet whether she’s frightened of what she did or of what my father did.”

Rebecca asked why he had come to tell me.

He said he wanted us to understand that he was not helping his mother intimidate us.

He had loved her as a child and still worried about her, but he could no longer protect her by pretending not to see what she was doing.

I thanked him and watched him walk down the sidewalk.

His shoulders were hunched, as though the old family house still had a hand on his back.

Rebecca stood beside me until he disappeared around the corner.

“You know,” she said, “he’s losing a version of his mother he probably needed to believe in.”

I thought about Sophie and the people we ask children to trust.

“I hope he finds another version he can live with,” I answered.

Chapter 13: The Box From the Storage Unit

Two weeks passed before Priya contacted me again.

During that time, Marjorie stopped approaching the porch, but I sometimes saw her standing behind her curtains long after midnight.

I kept taking Sophie to school and going to work, determined that the story would not consume every ordinary hour.

On Thursday, Priya asked whether I could attend a meeting with Daniel Mercer and Thomas Greeley at the municipal building.

Evan had voluntarily delivered three boxes from his father’s storage unit through his attorney.

Investigators had cataloged the contents and determined that some documents could be discussed with the people who had provided related evidence.

I arrived to find Daniel standing beside the conference room window.

He was tall, with his mother’s serious eyes and a carpenter’s rough hands.

He looked toward me and smiled nervously.

“You must be Leah.”

We shook hands, and I told him his mother had chosen a good house.

He looked down for a moment before answering.

“She loved that kitchen window.”

Thomas entered carrying a cardboard folder filled with duplicates of his own heating records.

He and Daniel recognized each other immediately, although they had not spoken in almost twenty years.

Thomas embraced him with such sudden force that the younger man laughed in surprise.