“I don’t. Mr. Croft’s secretary, Marilyn Monroe, called here on the night of January first to tell me Russ had died. I’ve tried calling her back since then but that number has been disconnected and the Ascension website is down.”

Beckett says, “Your husband made quite a good living, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Irene says. “After he took the job with Ascension.”

“This house must have been expensive to renovate.”

“It was.”

“And how did you think your husband was earning so much money?”

“He worked at a hedge fund,” Irene says. “And I thought that provided a good salary. I didn’t know about St. John. I didn’t know about the other house…”

“You went down there recently, though? After he died?”

“Yes. That was my first time. We went for a week and returned home last Friday. My mother-in-law, Russ’s mother, was failing. Now she’s passed away so I have that to deal with.”

“I’m sorry,” Beckett says. He looks at her again, this time more sympathetically.

“Would you like some tea, Agent Beckett?”

“No, but thank you.”

“I’d like some tea,” Irene says. “Is it all right if we go into the kitchen so I can make some? I mean, I’m free to move around the house, right?”

“Just stay where we can see you,” Agent Beckett says. He rests his hands on his thighs and pushes himself to a stand. “Actually, some tea might warm me up.”

Irene makes a pot of Lady Grey, and while she’s at it, she prepares a tray of sandwiches and rinses two bunches of grapes. Agent Beckett accepts a ham and cheese and a cup of tea. An agent who looks like Tom Selleck pops into the kitchen to report that they have found nothing.

“Did you remove or destroy any of your husband’s papers or personal belongings after he died?” Beckett asks.

“I did not,” Irene says. “I searched through both this house and the house on St. John, looking for clues.”

“Clues?”

“What he was into,” Irene says. “Certainly, Agent Beckett, you realize that I think all this is suspicious as well. My husband was killed in a place I didn’t know he was visiting, then I found out he lived there. He owned property there. I was looking for answers.”

“What did you find?”

A mistress, Irene thinks. A love child. “Nothing,” she says.

The youngest agent—a baby-faced ginger—pokes his head into the kitchen. “Nothing in the master bed or bath,” he says. He eyes the tray of sandwiches. “Are those for everyone?”

“Help yourself,” Irene says. Then she thinks of something! A hiding place! She looks at Beckett, who is reviewing his notes as he eats his ham and cheese.

No, she won’t tell them. Maybe they’ll find it. Maybe they won’t.

Irene wonders if this investigation can work both ways. “I called my real estate contact in St. John to request a death certificate.” She blows across the surface of her tea. “My family attorney here says that until I produce it, Russ is technically still alive.” She pauses, waiting for a reaction, but none comes. “Which would be quite something, because we’ve already scattered the ashes. Or what we thought were Russ’s ashes. I never saw the body and I wasn’t consulted about the cremation until after it was a done deal. Is there any chance…I mean, do you think my husband might still be alive?”

Beckett stands up to secure the door to the hallway and then the door to the dining room. “You’ve been very accommodating,” he says. “And we appreciate it. I’m sure you realize that we’re here because we have reason to believe your husband had illegal business dealings. The one thing I can assure you”—Agent Beckett holds Irene’s gaze—“is that your husband is dead.”

“He is,” Irene says. Yes, he is, she knows this. She has been processing this news for over two weeks. And yet hearing Beckett say the words comes as a fresh shock. Irene’s eyes sting with tears. The dreams were just that—dreams—but Irene must have been hanging on to a thread of hope. None of this added up. From the beginning, it felt like a hoax. The person who told Irene that Russ was dead—Marilyn Monroe—wasn’t someone Irene had ever met face to face. Paulette had been professional to the point of seeming insensitive, nearly as if she was just going through the motions because she knew Russ would turn up eventually. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Beckett says. He must have definitive proof, Irene thinks, but he isn’t sharing it. “We’re going to need your cell phone and your computer. They’ll both be returned to you.”

“Yes, of course,” Irene says. She pulls her cell phone out of her purse just as it lights up and starts chiming with a call from Lydia. Of course it’s Lydia. Irene hits Decline and hands it over. She nods at her laptop on the desk in the corner. “When you say my husband had illegal business dealings, you mean Ascension had illegal business dealings, right? Todd Croft had illegal business dealings. I can tell you right now that Russ just wasn’t the kind of person who would—” She notices the expression on Agent Beckett’s face and stops talking. Russ wasn’t the kind of person who would…what? Have a mistress, a secret daughter, and a nine-bedroom villa down in the Caribbean? It’s pretty clear that Irene doesn’t know what kind of person Russ was. She is as clueless as Ruth Madoff was. Irene remembers back when that news story broke. She had thought, Of course the wife knew her husband was running a bazillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. How could she not know? But now that Irene is in a similar situation, she’s certain Mrs. Madoff had no idea what was going on. She probably spent all her time at the club lunching with her friends and meeting with her personal shopper. And if Ruth Madoff—or Irene—had asked her husband questions about his business, who’s to say either woman would have been told the truth?

Irene, for one, hadn’t asked any questions. She had happily accepted the money Russ deposited into her renovation account and turned her attention to wallpaper and crown molding. “Are you looking for Todd Croft?”

Barely a nod from Beckett. “Not at liberty to say.”

Yes; the answer was yes. “He’s drinking a daiquiri on some remote island without a name,” Irene says.

“That actually happens less than one would imagine,” Beckett says. “Men like Todd Croft can’t just drop out of society. They’re too power hungry.” Beckett pops the last bite of sandwich into his mouth and polishes off his tea. “Don’t worry. He’ll turn up.”

“I did learn two things on my own,” Irene says, “that you might find helpful.” She’s hesitant to hand over what she knows, but Russ’s words have taken root inside of her. Irene is the only person I trust to do the right thing. He probably meant the right thing for Rosie and Maia but he most certainly also meant the right thing morally, which was to cooperate with the FBI, tell the truth, preserve her own integrity, protect the boys. “We have a bank account at Federal Republic. I have a statement I can give you. And the teller informed me that Russ made the last two deposits of seventy-five hundred dollars apiece…in cash.” Irene searches Agent Beckett’s face to see if this news startles him as much as it startled her, but he doesn’t even blink. Of course, he’s in the FBI. He has seen…Irene can’t even imagine what. “And I asked my attorney, Ed, Edward Sorley, to find the account that Russ used to pay for this house when we bought it. He has a copy of a cashier’s check drawn on a bank—MGST or something like that—in the Cayman Islands.”

Agent Beckett’s left eyebrow lifts a fraction of an inch. “Sounds about right,” he says. “Would you give me Mr. Sorley’s contact information, please?”

The FBI agents leave at eight thirty that night. As they’re finally heading out the door—with far less evidence than they anticipated, Irene can tell by their dejected demeanors—she suggests that they go to the Wig and Pen for dinner.

“Great wings,” she says. “My mother-in-law…” But she can’t finish the sentence.

Agent Beckett shakes her hand. “Thank you for your help today.”

Irene finds herself uncharacteristically craving validation. She was helpful, right? They’re aware from how cooperative and accommodating she’s been, from the details she’s shared, and from her general demeanor that she had no idea what Russ was involved with. She is innocent. She should not be held accountable—and yet she fears that she’ll see these men again storming her house in the predawn hours with a warrant for her arrest.

Their visit today has taken its toll; she’s scared.

“Will you be back tomorrow?” she asks.

“Someone will be by to drop off your phone and your computer,” he says. “Here’s my card. Don’t hesitate to call if you think of anything else you want to tell us.”

Irene waits ten minutes, then fifteen. When she’s positive the agents are not coming back, she snaps off the porch light and heads for the library.

The house phone rings, startling her.

Should she answer?

It’s probably Cash, wondering why she isn’t answering her cell phone. Well, honey, the FBI has it…

“Irene?”

“Lydia,” Irene says. She carries the phone into the library, where she snaps on the Tiffany lamp and collapses in her favorite reading chair. “Hi.”

“I got your texts,” Lydia says. “But then you didn’t answer when I called. You can’t…be serious? Russ is not dead! You would have told me right away if you’d found out he was dead. It was just hyperbole, right? You wish he were dead. What did he do wrong? He was away somewhere, right?”

“The Virgin Islands,” Irene says. The conversation feels like a hill she doesn’t want to climb.

“The…where? Did you tell me Russ was in the Virgin Islands? You didn’t tell me that. I would have remembered.”

Irene closes her eyes. This is just as excruciating as she feared it would be. She has made things far worse by waiting for so long. Lydia doesn’t believe her; Irene should have called her right away. Irene should have brought her—or someone—in at the beginning. But she hadn’t. It had been so sudden and so bizarre, so inexplicable. It was still inexplicable—and yet, here they are.

“Lydia,” Irene says. “Russ is dead. He was killed in a helicopter crash in the Virgin Islands on January first. He was there on business. The rest of the details are too painful to share right now. His body was cremated and the boys and I flew down to scatter his ashes.”

“What?” Lydia shouts. There’s a muffled voice in the background. “Brandon and I are on our way over right now.”

“No,” Irene says. “Please, I was just heading up to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise.” She thinks for a second. “Brandon who?”

“Brandon the barista,” Lydia says. “We’re dating. We’ve been dating since…that night.”

Irene supposes it’s too late to ask Lydia to keep the news of Russ’s death to herself. “I’ll call you tomorrow, really. I…I have to go.”

“Okay,” Lydia says. She sounds put out, and then she starts to cry. “I’m so sorry, Irene. I’m sure you’re destroyed. Russ was…well, you know he was the most devoted husband.”

Wasn’t he just, Irene thinks. “Good night, Lydia.” She punches off the phone, sighs deeply, then turns her attention to the library shelves. Three shelves in from the right, three shelves down from the ceiling, Irene finds the Oxford English Dictionary that she lugged to college, Roget’s Thesaurus, and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations in a solid, scholarly stack. She moves the three massive tomes onto the brocade sofa and slides the panel out of the back of the shelf to reveal a secret compartment. And voilà! There’s a manila envelope, stuffed full.

Irene had forgotten all about the secret compartment until she started thinking about hiding places. The secret compartment had been original to this room, and even though the library had undergone a complete overhaul, Russ had insisted the compartment stay. It added character and history—they agreed it had probably been used to hide alcohol during Prohibition. It was one of the only aspects of the house Russ had taken a personal interest in.

What will we hide in there? Irene had asked.

Love notes, he’d said.

She remembers that, clear as day. Love notes.

She pulls out the manila envelope and empties the contents onto the coffee table. It’s a stack of postcards secured with a rubber band. For one second, Irene holds out hope that the postcards are family heirlooms, maybe the correspondence that Milly conducted with Russ’s father while he was away in the navy. But once she wrangles the rubber band off, she sees the pictures on the postcards are all of St. John—Cinnamon Bay, Maho Bay, Francis Bay, Hansen Bay.

None of the cards is addressed. On the back of each is a short, simple message. I love you. I’ll miss you. You are my heart. I’ll be here waiting. I love you. I love you. I love you. All of them are signed with the initials M.L.

M.L.? Not Rosie? She thinks of Maia, but these notes feel, almost certainly, like declarations of romantic love. So they have to be from Rosie. M.L. must be a nickname.

These are the love notes Russ was talking about then, years earlier, when he insisted they keep this compartment.

Irene feels a wave of anger and disgust—he kept these in the house!—but she also feels implicated. If she had to guess, she would say Rosie tucked these cards into Russ’s luggage for him to find once he’d arrived home. Or maybe she slipped them into his jacket pocket as he was leaving. Instead of throwing them away, as Russ certainly knew he should, he’d kept them. He’d wanted—or needed—to save this proof that someone loved him because so little love was shown to him at home.

Irene has heard that love is a garden that needs to be tended. And what had Irene thought about that? She had thought it was sentimental nonsense, the stuff of sappy Hallmark cards. Love, for Irene, was a daily act—steadfastness, loyalty, devotion. It was raising the boys, creating a beautiful, comfortable home, stopping by to see Milly three times a week because Russ was too busy to do it himself. It was ironing Russ’s shirts, making his oatmeal with raisins the way he liked it, taking his Audi to the car wash so it was gleaming when he returned from his trips.

She tosses the postcards in the air and they scatter. She would like to burn them in one of her six fireplaces; nothing would give her greater satisfaction than watching Rosie’s declarations of love for Russ curl, blacken, and go up in smoke.

Forgiveness, she thinks. She will save the postcards and give them to Maia someday.

She picks up the landline and dials, and Huck answers on the first ring. “Hello,” he says. “Who’s calling me from Iowa City?”

“It’s me,” Irene says, which she knows is presumptive. They haven’t been friends long enough for her to be “me.”

“Hello, you,” he says, and she feels better. “What’s up?”

What should Irene tell him first? That she spent all day with the FBI? Or that she found an illicit cache of postcards from his stepdaughter to her husband?

“Adam leaves a week from Tuesday?” she says.

“Yep,” Huck says.

“All right,” Irene says. “I guess that means I’ll be down a week from Monday.”

“You serious?” Huck says. She hears him exhale, presumably smoke. “Angler Cupcake, you serious?”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes,” she says.