“I came alongside her. I wanted her to stop. The road was wet. She moved toward me, I moved away, and she lost control.”
“You struck her car.”
“It was an accident.”
“You left her there.”
“I called it in.”
“Anonymously, twenty minutes later.”
He looked at me sharply.
I had guessed.
His reaction confirmed it.
“Why did you tell police you hadn’t seen her?” I asked.
“Because people like you turn accidents into murder.”
“People like me?”
“Men who need a villain because they can’t accept that their wife chose to interfere in things she didn’t understand.”
The anger inside me became strangely quiet.
I had imagined this moment for four years without knowing it. In every imagined version, I shouted. I overturned the table. I made him feel one fraction of what I had felt.
Instead, I saw exactly what he was.
A frightened, vain man who had spent his life making other people carry the consequences of his choices.
“You could have helped her,” I said.
“She was already gone.”
“You didn’t check.”
“I could tell.”
“You didn’t check.”
His fingers closed around the bourbon glass.
“I came here to offer you something.”
“What?”
“Money. A trust for Emma. Enough that neither of you ever has to work again.”
“In exchange for what?”
“You retract the accusations. Say Rebecca manipulated you. Destroy anything Laura left.”
“You believe I still have the ledger.”
His expression betrayed him again.
I leaned closer.
“You recovered the original from Laura’s storage unit. But you never found the duplicate.”
There was no duplicate that I knew of.
Gavin’s face drained of color.
“Where is it?”
“Somewhere your money can’t reach.”
He stood so abruptly that his chair struck the wall.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“I’ll take Emma from you.”
“No.”
“I’ll burn your name down.”
“You already tried.”
“I’ll—”
He stopped.
Two federal agents had entered behind him.
They did not arrest him.
Not yet.
They simply walked to our table and asked Gavin to accompany them for an interview.
He looked at me as though I had performed a trick.
But the confession about Laura was only one piece, and the recording still needed corroboration.
As agents escorted him out, he turned.
“You think this ends with me?” he said. “Ask Patricia who signed the repair payment.”
My mother-in-law had not merely covered for Gavin after Laura died.
According to him, she had helped erase the evidence.
### Part 10
Patricia opened her door before I knocked.
