“But you need to know what he told me.”

For most of their marriage, Patrick had insisted Lucas died after the boiler accident.

Linda had seen family photos with one face missing.

She once asked who had been cut out.

Patrick told her it was a former coworker who had betrayed the family.

“I believed him because he said it so confidently,” she whispered.

“He wasn’t kind in private, but I never pictured anything like this.”

She handed me copies of family holiday letters she had kept in a cedar chest.