Rebecca had always asked inconvenient questions.

She would have wanted to know whether anybody had actually seen Clara take the necklace.

Adam could almost hear her voice.

That night he sat down to write Clara an apology.

He wrote that he had been under tremendous stress, that his mother’s judgment had rarely failed him before, and that he had acted in the family’s interests.

Reading the letter, he realized every sentence made him the subject of the story.

He tore it up and began again.