*Sweetheart.* He had always called me that.
My whole life.
Miriam made tea.
I didn’t drink mine.
She didn’t drink hers either.
At some point I fell asleep on her sofa with Frank’s letter still folded in my coat pocket, and when I woke the light through the curtains was gray and early and Miriam was already in the kitchen.
Paulson called at eight forty-seven.
“I spoke to a colleague at the medical examiner’s office,” he said.
“Given the circumstances — the nurse’s statement, the timeline, the fact that your father’s condition changed acutely after an unsupervised visit — they’re willing to take a closer look before the death certificate is finalized.
That buys us time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to do this correctly.
I also ran Gerald Marsh through the system last night.” A pause.
“He has a civil judgment against him from 2019.
Fraud case, settled out of court.
