Celia stood on that patio in the morning sun and didn’t move for five full seconds.

Then she smiled, and it was the smile you give a delivery driver who has come to the wrong house.

“Andrea,” she said.

“You’re up early.”

“I’m here for my client,” Andrea said.

“Your client isn’t welcome on this property,” Celia said.

“My brother was clear about that.”

Andrea never raises her voice, and she didn’t raise it then.

“Your brother will hear from me before noon,” she said.

“So will the insurance carrier for that pool camera.

I have a certified copy of the file and a signed statement from the man who pulled it.”

Celia looked past her at Theo, who was standing by the gate with his cap in his hands.

Something moved in her face and then went away.

She turned around and walked back inside without another word.

Theo let out a long breath and said he supposed he’d be packing his tools.

Andrea put a hand on my back and walked me to the car.

That afternoon she came up to my hotel room with a laptop and a folder and sat down in the chair by the window like a woman who had decided not to leave until I understood her.

“I had my forensic accountant go through the trust filings this morning,” she said.

“Look at these.”

She turned the screen toward me.

Six documents.

All of them trust amendments.

All of them signed at the bottom in Margaret Whitmore’s name.

“Those are her signatures,” I said.

“Look at the M,” Andrea said.

“Now look at the M she wrote in your guest book on Saturday, when she came in on Daniel’s arm.”

I looked.

The loops leaned different ways.

The pressure was different too, heavier at the start of the stroke, like someone who had practiced it.

“Celia,” I said.

“Celia,” Andrea said.

“Six amendments in fourteen months.

The last three moved two point four million dollars out of the family trust into an account in her own name.”

I sat down on the end of the bed.

“Why would she need that much money?”

I asked.

“Because she doesn’t have it anymore,” Andrea said.

“There are wire transfers to two casinos and a private card room outside Hartford.

She’s been covering markers since last spring.”

“And if a judge declares Margaret incompetent,” I said, “Celia becomes trustee.”

“That’s the whole game,” Andrea said.

“Right now Margaret controls the trust.

If Margaret is incompetent, Celia steps in, and nobody asks her where two point four million dollars went.”

“And a scandal around me buys her time,” I said.

“A scandal around you means the family is too busy defending a lawsuit to read a bank statement,” Andrea said.

“Yes.”

I asked her if Daniel was part of it.

She thought about it before she answered, which I appreciated.

“I don’t think he signed anything,” she said.

“I think he’s been paying his sister’s bills and not asking questions.

That’s not the same thing.

It’s also not nothing.”

At nine that night someone knocked on my door.

I looked through the peephole and saw my husband standing in the hallway of a Hampton Inn with his tie off and his jacket over his arm.

I put my phone in my pocket, started the recorder, and opened the door.

“Nora,” he said.

“Can I come in?”

I stepped back and let him.

He sat on the end of the bed where I’d sat that afternoon and rubbed his face with both hands.

“Celia has debts,” he said.

“I’ve been covering them for a year.

I thought if I kept her head above water until Mother—” He stopped.

“Until your mother what?”

I said.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I didn’t know she’d touch the trust.”

“So you knew about the money.”

“I knew she was drowning,” he said.

“I didn’t know she was forging signatures.

I swear to God, Nora.”

I stood by the window with my arms folded and let him talk.

Then he reached into his jacket and set a folded page on the bedspread.

“It’s a statement,” he said.

“It says you slipped and knocked Mother into the pool.