Her only error had been generosity, and she found she could not quite bring herself to be ashamed of it.

What she could do was stop.

She peeled off the rubber gloves she’d been wearing, set them beside the sink, washed her hands, and dried them carefully.

Then she walked out of the kitchen — not toward the bedroom, where a wife who had just been humiliated might go to cry, but down the hall, toward the wine room, and the panel in the wall that none of them knew existed.

Chapter 5 — The Panel in the Wall

Behind a cabinet of old bottles, a narrow section of wood looked exactly like part of the wall.