But I watched Romy nod in the back seat and turn to look out the window at the pines going by, lighter, and I thought, we are going to be all right.

We were always going to be all right.

And Delphie, who had already forgotten the whole morning, asked if we could stop for pancakes, and we did.

Chapter 14 — How It Ended

I will tell you how the rest of it went, because you will wonder, but I will tell it the way it actually happened, which is slowly and in offices, not in a single dramatic afternoon.

Elke Trask’s fraud caught up with her the way fraud does when a careful old man has left a trail for it to follow.