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decade-old sex scandal with a barely teenage girl; the ensuing fifteen-year cover-up in which the Bandon family fell into a bizarre caretaking role with the acquiescence of the girl’s mother; the arrest of his seemingly perfect son for murder two weeks earlier; speculation about what would have happened if he’d been confirmed to the federal court prior to the disclosure.

Tanya had said what she needed to get Alex Bandon off that roof, but the NYPD was not bound by her promises. They promptly filed first-degree murder charges, setting forth in the indictment the special circumstance that the murder was intended to silence the victim of a statutory rape committed sixteen years earlier in Baltimore, Maryland.

Given that Alex was only twenty-one years old, the media had begun asking questions about the identity of the parties involved in the original crime. A dogged reporter at the Post had traced Tanya’s past to her former neighbor, Anne Hahn, and made the connection to the Bandons from there. Now Bandon was resigning from office, relying on a statute of limitations to avoid prosecution in Maryland while Max’s office weighed potential charges in New York for official misconduct.

And, just as Laura Bandon had predicted, the coverage came with plenty of questions about the wife. Why would she stay with this man? How could she have helped him cover this up? How could she have allowed him to pursue a judicial career knowing that this bombshell lay in his background? Comparisons to Elizabeth Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Silda Spitzer flew. Such accomplished and complex women, all lumped together under one big Stepford Wife umbrella, just as Laura had predicted. Just as her son had feared.

One of the anchors held a finger to her earpiece and then interrupted the panel of breathless political analysts to report a breaking story. “I’m getting word here that real estate mogul and infamous playboy Sam Sparks has just put out a statement. Let’s go to Jeff Baker, who’s reporting live outside the Sparks Industries building.”

A sandy-haired correspondent swept his hair back against a blustering wind. “Well, the single ladies of New York are going to have to scratch one eligible bachelor off their list today. Billionaire Sam Sparks has issued a statement essentially coming out, as they say. It’s very brief, so I’ll read it in full:

“As a prominent public servant admits that the secrets he has hidden for years have harmed those he loves most and brought horrific tragedy to innocent people, I have come to realize the danger of a life lived in a lie. Accordingly, I am making clear today that I am a gay man. I will continue to run Sparks Industries as I have for nearly twenty years and thank my colleagues and investors in advance for their continued support. I have now said all that I wanted to say, or will say, about this subject.”

“Good for him,” Max said.

Paul Bandon’s disclosure had been forced by circumstance, but Sam Sparks’s had not. As far as the public knew, Nick Dillon murdered Robert Mancini after Mancini blackmailed him. No specifics about the nature of the blackmail. No details such as the Blagojevich-style hairpiece and wedding band they’d found in his car, props Dillon had worn on his arranged dates with Katie Battle and Stacy Schecter. No mention of Sparks.

She looked at her watch. One p.m. on the dot. “Think they’re going to show?”

“Yeah, they’ll be here.”

“How do you think it’s going to go?”

“I don’t know. I understand what Tanya’s trying to do, but it could be an absolute train wreck.”

Tanya’s lawyer was still hammering out a plea deal, but most of the big-ticket items were in place. She would plead to fraud charges and serve four years probation with intensive psychiatric counseling. A support center for adult victims of child sex abuse was trying to convince one of the local colleges to admit her. Given the stunt she pulled with NYU, she’d be a hard sell, but one of her former professors was vouching for the work she’d done as Heather Bradley.

But today’s meeting wasn’t about Tanya the defendant; she had asked for an opportunity to apologize to Megan’s parents. To Ellie’s surprise, Jonas and Patricia had agreed. Maybe now that they had someone else to blame, they might be able to begin to forgive Tanya Abbott.

The upcoming sit-down between Tanya and the Gunthers was not the only case of strange bedfellows to emerge from the aftermath. Stacy Schecter had stopped by the precinct the previous week to thank Ellie and Robin Tucker. She said they’d saved her in more ways than one, and Ellie believed her. The Craig’s List account was closed, and the Erotic Review profile was gone.

As she’d left the building, Jess had been smoking a cigarette as he waited for his sister on Twenty-first Street. He commented on her Boomtown Rats T-shirt. They were still talking when Ellie showed up. She lied and said she had more work to do, and then watched from upstairs as they made their way to Plug Uglies without her.

It wouldn’t last. It never did with Jess. But women never seemed to mind.

The unspeakable secret that had plagued Sam Sparks’s entire adult life came and went from the television in a flicker as the talking heads bounced directly back to the Bandons. Now the screen displayed a photograph of Laura Bandon, with bullet-point highlights of her bio: Princeton, Georgetown Law School, former associate at Covington & Burling prior to the birth of her son.

“I still don’t get it.” The female anchor sounded as if she had been personally betrayed. “Why in the world would she stay with this guy?”

“So,” Max said, hitting the power button on the remote, “would you stay?”

“Why? Are you planning to scope out the junior high schools this afternoon?”

“You’re gross.”

“You started it.”

“Seriously. I’m a man, and I don’t get it. I’ve had girlfriends—”

“No, you haven’t. No one before me.”

“Fine. I’ve had members of the opposite sex throw me in the doghouse for a week just for smiling at someone the wrong way.”

“Well, you do have an amazing and unrepentantly flirty smile.”

“So much so that it’s gotten me in trouble. But then some guy like Bandon gets caught doing the nanny’s daughter—and let’s set aside the fact that she’s a child, for Christ’s sake. Seriously, why wouldn’t a woman like Laura Bandon take off?”

“Because she loves him.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Maybe. Love’s a powerful thing.”

A knock at the door caught their attention. A secretary showed Jonas and Patricia Gunther into the room.

“I’m sorry,” Patricia said. “Were we interrupting?”

“Of course not.” Max stood and gestured to the unoccupied chairs around the table. “Come on in.”

Jonas reached for his wife’s hand as soon as they were seated. Maybe Ellie had been wrong about their daughter’s death being the beginning of the end for them.

“Is Heather—Tanya, I’m sorry. Is Tanya here yet?”

“I’m sure she will be shortly,” Ellie said. “This was very important to her.”

Max took a seat at the head of the table. “She’ll tell you herself, but I’ve spent a lot of time with Tanya the last couple of weeks. Her defense attorney suggested it so our office would have a better sense of the person we’re dealing with. You’d be perfectly within your rights to be skeptical, but, for what it’s worth, I do believe that she never realized she was putting your daughter in jeopardy.”

They were interrupted by another knock. The same secretary, this time with Tanya Abbott. She had pulled her hair into a demure knot at the nape of her neck and was dressed in a conservative navy blue skirt and tan turtleneck.

Max handled the awkward introductions. “Mr. and Mrs. Gunther. This is Tanya Abbott.”

Tanya stepped into the room with her hands clasped in front of her like a child making a presentation to a class. All eyes were on her, but her gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle of the table. She cleared her throat before speaking.

“Thank you for coming here, Mr. and Mrs. Gunther. I’ll admit that I didn’t know your daughter well. But she was a good person—to me and to her friends. And she was smart and sweet and, just, a really good person.” She