At half past five, my mother unlocked the door.

And faced with what the night had done, she did not, even then, call for anyone.

She called her sister.

I know the words because the recorder was still running. Is she still with us? Rowena asked.

My mother said no.

And Rowena said: Then lock it back up.

I’m coming. My aunt reached the house before six in the morning and went to work turning a crime into a story.

She set a bottle on the nightstand to suggest a cause that was never there.

She forged a note claiming my wife owed a debt she did not owe, and made my brother copy Odile’s signature onto it, to build a motive for a despair my wife never felt.

The tale was assembled and ready before the sun was fully up: the lonely, indebted, unstable wife of the man who was always away.