Chapter 8 : Tuesday morning at eight forty, Mara pulled into the Willow Bend members' row parking lot and parked in the second spot from the door.

Her father's truck was already there.

He was standing by the porte-cochère with a hat in his hands, wearing the sport coat he'd worn to Daniel's wedding and a plain shirt. He had a manila envelope under his arm. He looked older than he had at the beginning of the summer, which was not something she'd noticed until now, standing across the lot.

"You ready?" he said.

"No," she said. "You?"

"No."

They walked in together.

Renata Cole was at the front desk with a leather folder under her arm. She nodded at Mara. She looked at Robert Ellison Senior with a very slight, almost imperceptible, surprise that she did not permit to reach her face.

"Mr. Ellison," she said.

"Renata," he said. "I've got some paper for Mr. Whitfield."

"He's in the boardroom."

They walked down the hallway past the plaque. Her father stopped in front of it. He looked at it for a moment — the founding row, the lacquered brass, the neat engraved lines, the row where it read ROBERT J. ELLISON, and under it, the smaller row where it read DANIEL R. ELLISON — and he did not say anything, and Mara did not say anything, and they walked on.

In the boardroom, Finton Whitfield was in his chair. Thomas Ashby was at the far end. Renata stood at the side. Serena Downing sat by the door with the minutes book open. There was one empty chair at the middle of the table, and one empty chair at the far end — the chair where Hollis Ellison was supposed to sit — and one more empty chair that had been pulled over to the side of the table by Renata, which Mara understood, when she looked at it, had been pulled over for her father.

"Mr. Ellison," Whitfield said, standing.

"Mr. Whitfield."

"You're here with new information."

"I'm here," her father said, "to say what I should have said eleven weeks ago."

He put the manila envelope on the table and sat down. He did not need to be told where.

Whitfield opened the envelope and pulled out three sheets of paper. A handwritten note in ballpoint, on a lined pad from the pharmacy, with a date and a time at the top. A photograph of the same note, printed on photo paper. And a single sheet of bank statements that had been stapled to the back, printed from the credit union's website Sunday night, showing the two hundred and forty dollars paid to Willow Bend Country Club, out of Mara Ellison's own checking account, on two dates, matching the two paid quarters.