He turned back to face the stunned crowd, his voice trembling so that the microphone hummed with low feedback.

“The fire… the fire fifteen years ago was not an electrical fault in the wiring. That was the false story we paid investigators to support.”

Chloe abruptly stopped crying. She slowly lifted her head from the wooden planks near my feet, staring up at her father in pure horror.

“I was heavily intoxicated,” Richard confessed, the words tearing out of his throat.

“I had been drinking scotch in my study for hours. I walked into the nursery to check on Chloe before Eleanor and I left for a charity gala. I… I dropped a lit cigar into the plastic wastebasket directly next to the crib. I thought I had put it out. I didn’t. We locked the house, got into the limousine, and drove away.”