For six years, Ellard had wired money to his son-in-law, Radley Hatcher, every single month.

He had done it since his daughter, Sidonie, died in a car crash on an icy stretch of highway upstate — her sedan off the embankment, into a ravine, the fire afterward, the body recovered burned past recognition.

He still remembered the state troopers at the door at two in the morning, and his wife, Quenby, saying over and over that there had to be a mistake.

The authorities said there wasn’t.

Six months later Quenby’s heart gave out, a massive attack, and Ellard had always believed that grief had simply broken it.

Radley had been left alone with a six-month-old baby.