“You swore to me you were already separated.” Kingston said nothing, and the nothing was its own confession.

“There’s a flash drive, too,” Otis said.

Ione’s father — a senior partner at a rival firm, a man whose good opinion Kingston had spent years courting — stepped forward and picked it up off the table.

“What’s on it?” “Messages,” Otis said.

“Emails.

Things he wrote and saved.” What was on it, it turned out, were drafts — careful, rehearsed versions of a story, tailored for different audiences.