I left my wife outside in the freezing cold because my sister yelled, “That woman is using you”; when I opened the balcony door I found a fingerprint, a cigarette butt and an unfinished letter, but what destroyed me the most was knowing who those $8,000 were really for.

Liam let out a dry, joyless laugh. “Help me?”

“I saw how you worked, how tired you were when you arrived, and how she made secret transfers,” Gwen cried. “Paige told me that Nora was dangerous, and that she had already destroyed a family before. She told me there was a way to scare her, to weaken her a little so that she would confess.”

Liam felt nauseous. “Weaken her?”

Gwen cried loudly. “She swore to me it wasn’t fatal. She said it would only make her dizzy and tired, and that’s how you’d open your eyes. I didn’t know about the sedative. I didn’t know Nora was going to try…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. Liam thought of Nora locked on the balcony, hugging her shoulders against the cold, believing her husband saw her as a thief.

He thought of the crumpled note she clutched in her hand. He had read it in the hospital.