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I went out to the porch to think about it and found Harold Cauthorne sitting there with a cup of something green and malodorous.

"Gregory. Sit with me a minute."

I sat.

"Can I ask you something."

"Of course."

"When you were married to my son. You came up here — what, six, seven times a year. Christmas. Rhoda's birthday. That Fourth of July with the thing on the boat." He turned the cup around in his hands. "In all that time did Esteban ever seem afraid of us?"

I did not answer immediately.

"Because I've been sitting out here for hours," Harold said, "trying to work out whether I have spent my entire life being one thing while believing I was another. And I can't get anywhere with it, because every single person I could ask works for me."

"Harold, don’t…”

"Which is the answer. Isn't it?" He laughed, and there was nothing in it at all. "That's the whole answer, that sentence right there. I got to it before six this morning and I've sat here two hours since anyway."

Now.

I want to be extremely clear about what happened next, because I have gone over it a great many times and I do not come out of it well.

There was a version where I told him the truth. Not about Esteban — about me. Harold Cauthorne was genuinely wrecked, sitting on his porch at ten in the morning asking whether he is the man he believes he is. And the man he was asking it of had a fraudulent holy man in his guest house on a twenty-thousand-dollar contract and a wedding to detonate.

He'd have handled it, too. That's the thing about Harold. He'd have been hurt and he'd have forgiven me by lunch, because he has never once in his life known how to hold a grudge.

What I said instead was warm, and good, and cost me nothing.

"You're a man who built something that made you rich, and being rich puts you in a category whether you consent to it or not. You can't opt out of the category. Nobody has ever managed it." I put a hand on his arm. "But you gave Esteban the week off before anybody asked you to. That isn't nothing, Harold."

Harold looked up at me with wet eyes and said, "Thank you, Gregory."

And over his shoulder, two floors up, a curtain moved in the east bedroom.

I don't know whether Blaine was standing there. I want to be honest that I don't know. But I looked at that window for a good four seconds while a decent man thanked me for something I had not earned, and the record should show that at no point during those four seconds was I thinking about Harold.

I have conned a great many people professionally. Studios. Agents. A bank, once, in a manner I'd rather not detail.

That was the first time I’ve ever felt it in my gut.

* * *

Lance found me late in the morning, which is dawn for him.

I was down in the meadow pretending to check the cables under the dance floor, because you can see the entire driveway from there. He came across the grass in sunglasses and a striped shirt that probably cost more than the tent, carrying a coffee and a script in a black cover with a rubber band around it.

I clocked the script before I clocked his face.

"You're up."

"I've been up since eight." He sat on the edge of the platform and put the script on his knees. "I need ten minutes."

"You can have as long as you want."

He took the sunglasses off. "I'm going to say a number of things and some of them are unkind, and I'd like you to let me get to the end."

"All right."