Bertram Selwyn had spent a fortune and a lifetime editing his own history, and he had been undone, in the end, by a crescent the size of a fingernail on the back of a child he would never meet.

The truth is patient.

It is more patient than the men who bury it.

It will wait three generations if it has to, and then it will surface at a christening or a graveside or a hospital bassinet, and it will not care whose life it costs to finally be said.

Matthias lifted his head and looked at me with naked pleading.

“Adela—” I didn’t answer.