Two weeks after being turned out into the winter, Marlowe was rushed to a hospital in Newark, badly dehydrated and worn to the bone.

While she lay hooked to IV fluids, Junia took her daughter-in-law’s abandoned SIM card, slotted it into a spare phone, and sent a carefully edited voice message to the whole extended family — a fake confession of infidelity, stitched together from fragments of old recordings.

She also intercepted and destroyed two certified letters from Everett Radcliffe, and turned him away at the door when he came in person to speak to Desmond.

Every road the truth might have traveled, Junia quietly closed.

The thoroughness of it was the truly chilling thing, and Desmond would only grasp its full scale much later, when Everett laid the whole timeline out for him.

This had not been a moment’s cruelty, a lie told in anger that then took on a life of its own.