Part One: The Lie He Told at the Front Door

Chadworth Prescott had built forty-one buildings in his life, and he had never once lied to his children about where he was going.

He thought about that as he stood in the marble entry hall of his own house at six-forty on a Tuesday morning, holding a leather travel bag that contained almost nothing, waiting for two little girls to come down the stairs and say goodbye to a trip he was not taking.

The bag was the part that bothered him most.

He had packed it himself the night before, in the dark, without turning the closet light on, because he did not want the housekeeper to see the light under the door and wonder.

Two shirts.

A folded suit he had no intention of wearing.

A dopp kit.

It weighed almost nothing, and he had to remember to carry it as though it weighed something.

He was fifty-three years old, and he had negotiated with city councils, union bosses, hostile boards and one sitting governor, and he could not remember ever being this afraid of two children coming down a staircase.

“Daddy!”

Gemma got there first, because Gemma always got there first.

She was six and a half and built like a bird, all elbows and knees, still in her nightgown with her hair standing up on one side.

She hit him at knee height with her whole body, the way she had been doing since she could walk, and he had to brace his heel against the floor to keep from stepping back.

“I’m not even dressed,” she informed him, as though this were his fault.

“I noticed.”

“Rosamund says I have to be dressed before the tutor comes or she’ll tell on me.”

“Will she?”