The tragedy had destroyed their mother; she had died two years later, still convinced that her youngest son had drowned in the cold water off the California coast, still, at the end, listening for a phone call that would never come.

Daniel had buried an empty coffin.

He had grieved for six years.

“Andrew is dead,” he said quietly, because it was the only thing he knew how to say, because it was the fixed and terrible fact around which he had rebuilt his life.

“No,” Maria said, gently, because she could see what she was doing to him.

“He staged the accident.

Andrew is alive, Mr.