His jaw tightened. “Ellen—” “He let a sixteen-year-old girl take the blame for something he did. He watched me grieve for five years. He stood at our daughter’s grave.” My voice stayed level. I needed it to stay level. “He is still in my house.” Marcus looked at the table for a long moment. “If I do this,” he said slowly, “it ends everything. My family—” “Your family ended the night he made that phone call,” I said. “You’ve just been pretending otherwise.” The kitchen was very quiet. Then Marcus stood up and walked to the counter. He opened a drawer and removed a small envelope. He set it in front of me. “I kept a record,” he said. “The date and time he called. What he said, word for word. I wrote it down that same night because I couldn’t sleep. I’ve kept it in that drawer ever since.”
on1 Comment on His jaw tightened. “Ellen—” “He let a sixteen-year-old girl take the blame for something he did. He watched me grieve for five years. He stood at our daughter’s grave.” My voice stayed level. I needed it to stay level. “He is still in my house.” Marcus looked at the table for a long moment. “If I do this,” he said slowly, “it ends everything. My family—” “Your family ended the night he made that phone call,” I said. “You’ve just been pretending otherwise.” The kitchen was very quiet. Then Marcus stood up and walked to the counter. He opened a drawer and removed a small envelope. He set it in front of me. “I kept a record,” he said. “The date and time he called. What he said, word for word. I wrote it down that same night because I couldn’t sleep. I’ve kept it in that drawer ever since.” 
ry — not for Daniel, not even entirely for Chloe, but for the five years of mornings I had made that pie and sat across from a man who had let me believe a story that was never true.
Ava stood a few feet away, her face turned up toward the sky.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“Now,” I said, “we go home.”
She looked at me.
“Is it still home?
After all of this?”
I thought about the kitchen table.
The lavender in the garden.
The jacket, now carefully folded in a box with Chloe’s other things.
The photograph, which would be returned to me after sentencing.
“It’s our home,” I said.
“Yours and mine.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said: “Chloe would have liked this ending.”
“She would have wanted it sooner,” I said.
Ava laughed — a short, surprised sound, like she’d
HHHHHHHH