Camilla looked down at the photograph again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know your father had kept the evidence. I only learned about the connection after the police contacted me.”
“And the video? The reason you told me to leave the house?”
“I recognized the old service passage in the reflection. My father once described it to me. I realized someone might be using it again.”
Camilla felt a mixture of relief and anger.
“You knew more than you told me.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “And I’m sorry.”
She looked toward Dorato’s enclosure.
For weeks, she had believed that her python’s strange behavior was the central mystery. Then she had believed the mystery belonged to her father.
Now she understood that the story stretched much further back than she had ever imagined.
“Edoardo,” she said, “is your father alive?”
There was a long silence.
Then he answered.
“I don’t know.”
