My rich father found me after I spent my childhood in foster care — one week later, he died, and his lawyer said, "You walked right into his trap."

She came back an hour later.

No knock this time — she tried the handle, found it unlocked, and pushed the door open.

I was sitting in the chair by the window.

I didn't stand.

She came in and sat on the edge of the bed, the same way I had sat the night before, and she looked at her hands for a moment before she looked at me.

"How much do you know about Richard?" she said.

"Enough to know you've been waiting to find out how much I know."

She didn't deny it.

"My father never talked about him.

Not once.

I found out he existed when I was nineteen — I found an old photograph in a box in the attic.

I asked Dad about it and he told me Richard was g*ne and to leave it alone."

"Did you?"

"For a while." She looked at the window.

"When Dad told me six months ago that he'd found you — that you were alive, that you'd been in foster care — I didn't understand it at first.

I knew he'd lost a baby.

He'd told me that much, years ago.

He said your mother had a daughter who didn't survive." She paused.

"When he told me you were alive, my first thought was that someone had made a terrible mistake.

My second thought was Margaret."

"Because you knew she was the one who told him."

"I suspected.

I'd always suspected something wasn't right about the story.

The way Dad never talked about it.

The way Margaret would change the subject whenever your mother's name came up." She looked at me directly.

"I called Margaret that day.

The day Dad told me about you."

"I know."

"I asked her if she had lied to my father.

I asked her directly."

"What did she say?"

"She said it was more complicated than I understood.

She said that if I let your father bring you here, everything would unravel and there would be consequences for people I cared about." Caroline's jaw tightened.

"She mentioned Richard."

I leaned forward slightly.

"What did she say about him?"

"She said Richard had been involved.

She said if the truth came out about you, it wouldn't just be her — it would be Richard too, and that Richard had information that could damage the estate and damage my inheritance regardless of what Dad's will said." She shook her head.

"She was trying to scare me.

I think she'd been scaring people for a long time."

"Did it work?"

Caroline was quiet for a moment.

"I told David Alcott to prepare for a contest.

Yes." She looked at her hands again.

"I told myself it was about the will.

About the fact that Dad changed it after one week.

But I think — I think part of me was afraid.

If Margaret was involved in something serious enough that she'd hidden you for thirty-one years, then I'd grown up with that woman at our dinner table.

I'd let her hold my hand at my father's funeral." Her voice broke slightly on the last word.

"I didn't want to know what that made me."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Caroline said.

"I'm asking you to understand that I didn't know everything.

I knew something was wrong.

I chose not to look at it directly.

That's its own kind of failure, and I know that."

"It is," I said.

She nodded.

She stood up.

"Richard is in Lisbon," she said.

"I found that out this morning.

I don't know if he knows Dad is g*ne yet.

I don't know if he knows about you." She moved toward the door.

"If Diane Holloway is as good as David says she is, she'll find him."

"She already has his name."

Caroline stopped at the door.

Her back was to me.

"Margaret called me after she texted you," she said.

"She told me to stay the course.

She told me the contest would succeed and that I should trust her." She turned around.

"I told her I was done."

She left the door open behind her.

I sat by the window for a long time after that.

The light outside had gone gold and low.

Somewhere below, I heard Caroline on the phone — her voice quiet, too quiet to hear words, but the tone was different from anything I'd heard from her before.

Tired.

Resigned.

My phone rang.

Diane.

"Richard Hargrove is in Lisbon," she said.

"I have a contact there.

He's agreed to speak to us."

"When?"