The answer embarrassed him, and the embarrassment was sharp and immediate and deserved.

Because Maria Collins had worked in his home for nearly three years, and in that time she had come to know him with a precision that he now understood was almost total.

Maria knew exactly how he took his coffee.

She knew his schedule better than his assistant did.

She remembered every anniversary connected to his family — his father’s death, his mother’s, the dates that mattered — and quietly, invisibly, arranged the house around them.

She had known a hundred small intimate things about Daniel Whitmore’s life.