Because Alistair Abernathy had understood something that his wife and son had not: that a family is, among other things, a machine for generating flattering stories about itself.

Every family does it to some degree — smooths the rough edges, recasts the villains as the misunderstood, arranges the past into a shape that lets everyone keep their dignity.

In most families it is harmless, the ordinary mercy we extend to our own history.

But in a family with real power and real money and real crimes to hide, that same instinct becomes something monstrous: a coordinated, well-funded, endlessly repeated fiction, told so often and so smoothly that even the people telling it begin to believe it.

The Abernathys had a beautiful story about themselves — the philanthropic dynasty, the children’s charity, the galas, the good name.