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“I was.” He gave a short breath that was not quite a laugh. “Thirty years, and nobody has ever put that photograph in front of me. I looked at it, and I heard my wife’s voice. It brought back so many memories that I wasn’t prepared to deal with. That’s not an excuse; it’s just what happened.”

“I’m sorry I did it on the day of the funeral.”

“You didn’t have another day. You said so.” Powell took another sip of his coffee. “I sat up most of last night, and went back and forth about it. I decided I’m going to tell you the truth. Not because I want to. Because you’re not going to stop until you find out whatever it is you’re looking for. I could see that yesterday. You’re a Winslow, after all.” Walter looked up, and there was something dry and tired in it. “Leigh told me all about Joel Winslow. Thirty years of it. I know exactly what your family is like when it wants something.”

Sam let that stand, because there was nothing to say about it. His father was a son of a bitch, and as his children, they were often tarred with the same brush. Being a Winslow came with downsides along with the perks.

“All right.” Walter put both hands flat on the table and exhaled. “Hannah is Leigh’s daughter. My wife and I adopted her in 1996, three days after she was born, in a hospital forty minutes from this house.”

Beside Sam, Alli went very still.

“None of us had any idea,” Sam said. “We were shocked when we found the photo.”

“You were never meant to know. Leigh got pregnant, and she hadn’t planned to. That’s the whole beginning of it.” Walter’s voice was shaky and soft, almost barely audible. “The man was married. She was young, and she was not going to be anybody’s scandal. She told me once that she wasn’t sure she had it in her to be somebody’s mother. She meant that. She wasn’t being modest; it was simply her truth. She’d never planned on having a family.”

“And you and your wife?”

“We’d been trying for years.” He said it without any drama at all, which made it worse. “Two losses. A lot of doctors. Margaret had got to the point where she couldn’t go to a baby shower. And her sister came to her one afternoon and said, I’m going to have a baby, and I don’t think I can keep her. She wanted us to have the baby. That way she could be close enough to make sure the baby was okay, and with people she absolutely trusted.”

He stopped for a second, his hand visibly shaking.

“It was the best day of my wife’s life,” he said. “And mine, too. I want you to understand that. Whatever else this is, it started with the best day of our lives.”

“I understand,” Sam said, wanting to ask a million questions but not saying a word.

Clearly, there was more here that Powell wanted to say.

“So Leigh came east. She had the baby. Our little Hannah. Leigh signed the papers, and she went home to Illinois and back to that office. She came to us twice a year for thirty years, and she was the best aunt that child could have had. And it worked. It actually worked, for everybody, for three decades.”

“Does Hannah know?”

Sam wasn’t sure it was any of his business, but that didn’t stop the question from tumbling out of his mouth.

“No.”

The kitchen was quiet, and Powell didn’t expand on his reply.

Sam chose his next words with more care than he had used in that study yesterday.

“She’s thirty years old,” he said.

“She is.”

“And she stood at that funeral yesterday and called her mother her aunt.”

“She did.” Walter’s jaw tightened, the tone more firm than previously. “I know how it sounds. I have known how it sounds for thirty years. The three of us agreed at the beginning that it would be better this way, and once you agree to a thing like that, there is never a good afternoon to go back on it. When she was five, it would have confused her. When she was fifteen, it would have wrecked her. When she was twenty-five she’d have wanted to know why nobody told her when she was fifteen. And then Margaret got sick, and it was not the time, and then Margaret died, and it was really not the time.”

Sam had the distinct feeling that it was never going to be the right time for Walter Powell.

“And Leigh agreed with that? All the way through?”

“Yes,” Walter said quickly. “As far as I know, she never changed her mind.”

That was a… wishy-washy answer. What did he mean? Had they never discussed it again as Hannah grew older?

Sam wasn’t convinced of the veracity of Powell’s quick answer. Walter’s eyes had gone down to the coffee cup, and his thumb was moving on the handle. He had answered a question about Leigh with a sentence about the limits of his own knowledge.

As far as I know.