Chapter 21

Alpha Grant

I remember the day my mother died. I was young. My father told me to wait in my bedroom while she was taken from the bathtub. Noises came through the door as my father led two men into their bedroom, into the bathroom where her dead body was. They carried her out—I heard them come down the hall—and an hour later one of the house workers came to get me for dinner like nothing had happened.

I told the woman, Theresa, to wait for me downstairs because I wanted...