The call came on a Tuesday morning in September, three years into our marriage, when the estate was doing its autumn thing and Rose was two and a half and had recently decided that the library’s lower shelves were her personal archive.
It came from a number I didn’t recognize, which no longer alarmed me the way it once had. I had a history with unknown numbers and most of them had delivered something useful, eventually.
This one was different.
The voice was young. A woman, perhaps twenty-five, speaking with the careful precision of someone who has rehearsed an opening line and is now committed to delivering it regardless of the nerves underneath.
“Mrs. Hargrove,” she said. “My name is Elise Vane. Preston Vane is my father.”
I sat down.
Preston Vane, who had threatened to release the
