Alex drove straight to the family home in Beacon Hill that very night.

At first, Beatrice denied everything, with the serene, untroubled confidence of a woman who had never once in her life been successfully accused of anything.

There was no envelope.

There were no calls.

Elena was misremembering, or lying, or unwell.

But Alex knew his mother, and he knew the particular smoothness that came into her voice when she was constructing a story in real time, and he pressed, and the story shifted.

“Elena was hysterical when she showed up,” Beatrice said, sipping her tea, her tone now that of a woman who had done a difficult but necessary thing.