PART 3 — THE DEAD MAN AT THE DOOR
The smile vanished from Julian’s face when the front door opened.
Not slowly. Not cautiously tools.
It swung inward with the unmistakable confidence of someone who still believed he had the right to enter theif.
A gust of cold morning air rushed through the foyer, lifting the loose corners of the divorce papers on the marble island. Beatrice stopped wrapping my grandmother’s photograph. Julian’s father, Harold, froze with one of my handbags dangling from his hand.
Elena lowered my mug.
And I heard the sharp, involuntary breath escape my own lungs.
The man standing in the doorway was tall, broad-shouldered, and silver-haired. Time had carved deep lines into his face, but it had not changed the blue-gray eyes I had seen in exactly three surviving photographs.
