What came down the line wasn’t a voice so much as the wreckage of one.

He was sobbing — the ugly, gulping, uncontrolled sob of a man who has finally understood the size of what he did and cannot get his breath around it.

“They’re gone, Corinne,” he wept.

“Theo isn’t — he isn’t mine.

Odette lied about everything, all of it, the whole — I have nothing.

I have nothing left.” A ragged breath.

“Please.

Please bring the girls back home.