“Genevieve,” he said, not looking at her.

“I cannot participate in this any longer.

I won’t.”

And that — not my canceled deal, not the security officers, not any of it — was the thing that finally cracked my mother’s composure, because Oliver had been her instrument for six years and instruments are not supposed to speak.

He told it standing there in the terminal, in a low, exhausted voice, like a confession he had been rehearsing in his sleep for years.

Six years ago, he said, my mother had come to his firm and instructed them that I — Christopher — wanted all contact with Rosalind severed, completely and permanently.