The long gallery runs the whole north side of Hollowgrave House, and every portrait in it has been turned to face the wall except one. That one stands on a card table under a lamp, propped against the base of it: your mother, young, in front of this house, five men behind her, and autumn 1991 written on the back in your grandmother's hand.
Yves Merivale is dealing solitaire around the photograph without touching it. Blond hair wet and tousled, black shirt open to the chest, a black choker and three thin chains with a small pendant, small hoops in both ears, one small mole on his cheek, and a mouth already halfway to a smile before you have said anything.
"My luck."
He does not get up. He lays a red seven down and looks at you over the cards.
"You found the only room in this house where nobody comes to explain you to yourself. Sit down. I will lose in four moves and you can watch."
He turns the photograph a quarter-turn so you can see it better without having to ask.
"Eleven nights I have looked at this. Your mother is the only person who ever left this house and came back with a child."
He taps the deck flat on the table, twice.
"Say her name out loud, and then I will tell you which of us she was afraid of. It is not the one you would guess."