PROLOGUE
It was a beautiful day in the Hamptons, the kind people later describe as perfect because tragedy has a way of making ordinary beauty feel significant. The sky was clear, the air soft enough for the terrace doors to remain open, and the gardens behind the house were already filling with family, friends, familiar faces, and people who had known Thomas Steadwihl long enough to believe they understood him. We were celebrating Dad’s sixtieth birthday.
Marisol and I were in the kitchen checking the last of the preparations while the remaining guests arrived. She watched one of the chefs finish a dish with enough butter to offend her personally.
“My goodness. Let’s take it down a notch,” she said. “We don’t need to raise Mr. Steadwihl’s cholesterol any higher.”
I laughed. “Please stop terrorizing the kitchen.”
“I’m protecting my brother.”
“You’re harassing the chef.” I said.
“Same thing.”
The chef wisely ignored both of us.
Growing up, Marisol had been the fun aunt. The one who laughed too loudly, stayed at the table too long, and somehow convinced my parents to let me do things they had already told me no to. But after Dad’s first stroke two years earlier, something in her changed. She watched him now. What he ate. How much he slept. Whether he looked tired. Whether he rubbed his chest or paused too long when standing. We teased her for it because humor was easier than admitting we had all started watching him too.
By then, guests had spilled onto the terrace, and Dad had finally escaped the house to greet them. I could hear variations of Happy sixtieth, Tom drifting in from the garden every few seconds. Everyone wanted a moment with him. That was one of the things Dad did effortlessly. He could make a room full of people feel as though he belonged, somehow, to each of them individually.
From the kitchen window, I saw Mom pull him away from a group of guests. She straightened the collar of his shirt, then said something I couldn’t hear. Dad smiled. Mom didn’t. She put a hand against his chest. He covered it with his own. The way she looked at him made me smile. Even after all those years, there was still something private between them, something that seemed to exclude the rest of the room. Mom had always told me that she loved my biological father deeply and that losing him had nearly destroyed her. Dad, she said, had been her gift from God.
I believed her.
I still do.
A few minutes later, Marisol shoved a small plate into my hands. “Bring this to him.”
I looked down. Fruit. “You’re joking.”
“He’ll eat it if you give it to him.”
“He’s sixty, not six.”
“He acts six.”
“You’re insane.”
“Cassandra.”
There was enough warning in the way she said my name that I took the plate. “Fine.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
I stole a strawberry before walking away.
“Hey.”
I turned around.
“That was for him.”
“He’ll survive.” It was the last stupid thing I remember saying before everything changed.
I made my way through the house and toward the terrace. Dad was standing near the edge of the lawn with a drink in one hand, laughing at something someone had said. Mom was a few feet away. I remember thinking he looked happy.
Not healthy.
Not strong.
Not young.
Happy.
I had almost reached him when the glass slipped from his hand. It hit the stone beneath him and shattered. Dad looked down at it. For a second, so did everyone else. Then he reached for the back of a chair.
“Dad?”
He didn’t answer.
The color left his face.
Mom moved first.
“Tom?”
His knees gave out.
Someone screamed.
The plate fell from my hands.
“Call 911!”
Everything afterward happened too quickly and somehow not quickly enough.
People rushed toward him. Chairs scraped against stone. Joe pulled Mom back while another person dropped to the ground beside Dad.
I pushed through the crowd.
“Dad.”
No one heard me.
Or maybe I didn’t say it loudly enough.
“DAD!”
