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had ended. It was as if Peter, with his serious, stuffy job at the Journal—not to mention a wife and children—needed to prove he was still a young man.

London changed that. They were certifiable grown-ups within months of arriving there, and Eliza wasn’t sure if that was because of Peter’s job, as bureau chief, or the city itself. Perhaps their newfound maturity was a result of the sheer distance from everything and everyone they had known. Now, back in the States, she felt old, on the verge of dowdy. Yet her own mother didn’t even have her first child until she was thirty-six and remained exuberantly youthful in her seventies. Maybe it was their old-fashioned roles—full-time mother, full-time bread-winner—that were weighing them down, making them middle-aged, out of touch.

“I know this sounds odd, but I kind of forgot about Walter. That is, I forgot they were going to execute him. He never thought he would die that way.”

Peter shifted, redistributing her weight, moving her arm, which had left a damp stripe across the front of his shirt. “I don’t remember that in the letter.”

“Then. The summer I was fifteen. I think he thought it would end in a slow-motion hail of bullets, like a movie. As opposed to a routine traffic stop at the Maryland line.”

Peter kissed the top of her head. His skin was warm, but then, it always was. Energy poured out of him, even when he was still.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

“You don’t know what love is.”

This was a joke, their own private call-and-response, so ingrained that Eliza couldn’t remember its origins, only that it always made her feel safe.

“Gross.” It was Iso, standing on the threshold. “Get a room.” Eliza wondered how long she had been standing there, what she had heard and whether she could make sense of any of it. The summer I was fifteen, hail of bullets, routine traffic stop.

“What do you need, baby?” Eliza asked.

Iso made a face. Possibly because of the word baby, or possibly because the mere sound of Eliza’s voice irritated her. “I came down to remind you to wash my Spurs jersey, in case you forgot. I want to wear it tomorrow.”

“I did. Wash it, that is. Not forget. But, Jesus, Iso, that jersey is made for damp England, not ninety-degree days in Montgomery County. Can’t you wear a T-shirt like the other kids?”

“No. Did you wash my socks, too? I had to dig a pair out of the hamper this morning.”

“Socks, too.”

“You know,” Peter put in, “if you can work an iPod and the television and the computer and TiVo, you could probably learn how to operate the washing machine, Isobel.”

Iso looked at him as if he were speaking Portuguese. Peter didn’t annoy her as much as Eliza, but she refused to acknowledge he had any power over her. She stalked off without a reply.

“I don’t want them to know,” Eliza said to Peter. “Not yet. That’s all I care about. Albie’s just gotten over those awful nightmares, and even Iso is more impressionable than she lets on.”

“It’s your call,” Peter said. “But there’s always the risk of someone else telling them. Especially as the execution draws closer.”

“Who? Not you, not my parents. Not even Vonnie, volatile as she can be, would go against our wishes.”

Peter shrugged noncommittally, too polite to say that he considered his sister-in-law capable of just about any kind of bad behavior. It was funny how Peter and Vonnie, who had so much in common—similar intellects and interests, even some parallels in their career paths—remained oil-and-water after all these years. You say funny, Vonnie sneered in Eliza’s head, I say Freudian. He wanted a mommy, so he married one. Peter was more diplomatic about Vonnie: She’s a feisty one. You always know what’s on her mind.

Eliza pressed him for agreement: “No one else knows.”

“Walter knows, Eliza. Walter knows, and he found you. Walter knows, and he might tell someone else. He has told someone else. The person who wrote the letter. Who clearly has our address, not that addresses are hard to find these days.”

“Well, there’s no one—oh, shit. That asshole. That alleged journalist, Garrett. But I’m sure he’s moved on to other lurid tales, assuming he’s still alive. Is it a proper use of irony to say that it would be ironic if he died in some hideous, salacious crime?”

“I don’t know if it would be irony, but it has a certain poetic justice.”

“Walter never spoke to him, though.