Marriage papers, perhaps, or the medical bills, or some cold accounting of what I now owed.

It was none of those things.

Inside were financial audits, dense with figures.

There were statements from banks in countries I had only ever seen on maps.

There were corporate filings, and there were photographs, the kind taken from a distance by someone who did not want to be seen taking them, of Arthur’s two adult children, Julian and Victoria, meeting with people I did not recognize.

I turned the pages slowly, understanding almost none of it, feeling only that I had opened a door into a room far darker than I had known existed in that bright and gilded house.