Part 6
Patricia’s eyes went back to Evan. “I know he had been coming here too often.”
Evan gave a short, incredulous laugh. “That is your evidence?”
“You never came by without calling before.”
“Clare asked me to.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it was true.”
“Was it?”
He did not answer.
Owen could feel the old familiar instinct trying to rise in him—the instinct to organize the conversation, to force it into order, to make everyone speak one at a time and stick to facts. It was useful in business. It made people think he was dependable.
But Clare was dead.
Facts were not arriving in clean lines.
They were coming in fragments, carried by the people who had failed her.
“You were at the house that night,” Owen said.
Evan nodded.
“Where were you when she fell?”
“I was in the foyer.”
“Where?”
“Near the stairs.”
“Where was she?”
“At the landing.”
“Was she alone?”
Evan did not answer.
Owen felt himself move closer.
“Was she alone?”
“No.”
“Who was with her?”
Evan’s eyes met his.
“You were,” Owen said.
No one breathed.
Evan looked toward the stairs, not up them, but at the empty space below the first step.
“It was not like that,” he said.
The phrase was so familiar it made Owen want to laugh. People said it when they had already decided language was the only thing between them and disaster.
“What was it like?” Owen asked.
Evan rubbed a thumb against the side of his palm. No visible jewelry. No ring. Nothing to mark him as belonging anywhere.
“She was upset,” he said. “She had been upset for days.”
“About what?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why?”
“Because it was not mine to tell.”
Owen’s voice rose despite himself. “She is dead.”
Evan flinched then. A real flinch, or a convincing one.
“She is dead,” Owen said again, quieter now. “And I am standing next to her in the house where you found her. So stop speaking like you are protecting her privacy.”
Evan’s face went tight. “You don’t get to decide what she wanted.”
Owen stared at him.
The sentence struck too close. It was the sort of thing Clare might have said. The sort of thing she had said, in different words, over and over.
You don’t get to decide.
A horrible possibility began to form—not a fact, not even a clear suspicion. Just a shape.
Maybe Clare had trusted Evan with something she had not trusted Owen with.
Maybe Evan had been the one person she believed would listen.
Maybe that was why he was here.
The thought was almost worse than murder.
Patricia saw something in Owen’s face. “No,” she said quickly. “Don’t let him do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make you doubt her.”
Evan’s stare moved to Patricia. “I’m not making him do anything.”
“You have been making people doubt themselves for years.”
“Not everything is about you.”
“It was not about me,” she snapped. “It was about my daughter.”
Clare’s name was not spoken. It did not need to be.
The silence afterward was brutal.
Owen turned back to the coffin. He looked at the flowers. White roses, lilies, polished brass hardware. Every choice had been made to make death look gentle. Clare had hated white roses, too. She said they looked like flowers that had given up.
He had not told anyone that. He had let Patricia choose because he could not choose anything.
Now he wondered what else he had given away because making a decision felt too painful.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he said.
Evan did not move.
“What happened here?”
Evan’s expression hardened. “You are not ready to hear it.”
Owen looked at him slowly.
“You think I’m not ready.”
“I think you are grieving.”
“I am grieving.”
“And you are looking for someone you can punish.”
“Are you saying it isn’t you?”
“I am saying you don’t know enough to accuse me.”
“Then tell me enough.”
Evan was quiet.
Patricia stepped forward. “He grabbed her.”
Evan’s head turned toward her.
Owen stared at Patricia.
“What?”
She swallowed. “Clare told me.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“What did she say?”
“That he had grabbed her arm.”
Evan’s voice went low. “That is not what happened.”
Patricia laughed again, but there was no sound of humor in it. “Of course.”
“She slipped,” he said. “I caught her.”
“You caught her.”
“She was standing too close to the stairs. She was agitated.”
“Agitated,” Patricia repeated.
“She had been drinking wine.”
Owen’s head snapped toward him.
Patricia went still.
Evan seemed to realize, too late, that he had said something he had not meant to say.
“She was pregnant,” Owen said.
“It was a glass.”
“You saw her drink?”
May you like
“She had a glass in her hand.”
“Did she drink it?”
