Trevor read the second page, then the third, and his hands began to shake. “This is all fabricated,” he said, but his voice cracked on the last word. Isabelle snatched a page from him, scanned it, and went pale. “Trevor, who is Dennis Rowe? It says he is suing you for four hundred thousand dollars.” He did not answer. I set my cup down gently. “Turn to the last page,” I said.

Trevor turned it, and the blood drained from his face. It was not a lawsuit. It was a photograph of a woman I had never met, holding a toddler, with a marriage certificate stapled beneath it. The date on the certificate was eleven months before he married my daughter. Isabelle stared at it, and the plate in her hand slipped and shattered. Then the doorbell rang, and someone began pounding on the front door.