M. Gessen

They all drive off.

State troopers follow.

Lena leaves too.

And did you know what, once everybody left, did you have any idea what he had been arrested for?

And did you have any idea who he might have hired somebody to murder?

It didn't take long.

It was Priscilla.

Alan, it seemed, had hired someone to kill Priscilla.

The question was if it was true or not.

Some of us took the news in faster than others.

The day after Alan's arrest, my brother Keith and I had a fight over the Justice Department press release, which identified the target only as P.C.

I was saying that it was obviously Priscilla, whose last name begins with a C. He was saying that it was obviously not Priscilla.

Lena kept telling everyone that Alan had been set up by business rivals or Russian agents or the FBI or someone.

But over the course of a few days, it sank in.

My cousin had been caught hiring someone to murder his ex-wife, the mother of his children.

This was when it felt like we snapped.

I certainly snapped.

I was shocked at how shocked I was.

It's not that I felt bad for Alan or Lena, it's just, how does something like this happen?

How had it happened right here in my family, in between our silly dinners and chess games and kids' birthday parties?