She pulled off her dark wool gloves, her fingers red and stiff from the cold.

“I saw him leave,” she said, her voice low. “But we don’t have much time.”

“He went toward the city,” I said, closing the door behind her. “He won’t be back for hours when he’s like this.”

“You don’t know him like I do, Evelyn,” she said.

She held the thick white envelope against her chest like a shield.

“I know my husband,” I said.

“Do you?” Rose asked.

She looked around our foyer, her eyes taking in the framed photographs on the console table.

There was a picture of Claire at seven, her front teeth missing, smiling in front of a giant pumpkin.

“She looks so much like him,” Rose murmured.

“She’s our daughter,” I said, my voice hardening.

“She is his daughter,” Rose corrected gently. “And she is mine.”

She walked past me into the kitchen, her movements familiar, as if she had memorized the layout of the house from afar.

I followed her to the granite-topped island.

She set the envelope down on the dark stone.