Sabine began crying.
Deborah touched her face.
Comforting her.
Then my mother removed something from her purse.
A small blue bottle.
Exactly like the one Julian had drawn.
My chair scraped backward.
“No.”
Quade paused the video.
My mother’s frozen face stared from the screen.
I thought of the coffin.
Her fingers finding my pulse.
Her whispered promise.
Do not move.
I’m getting you out.
I thought of her recording.
Her timing.
Her insistence that we avoid the police.
The trust.
The money.
The phone call.
My stomach convulsed.
I barely reached the sink before I vomited.
Quade waited.
When I could breathe again, he said quietly, “We don’t yet know what’s in that bottle.”
I wiped my mouth.
“Yes, we do.”
“We know what it resembles.”
“Julian saw her give it to Sabine.”
“Yes.”
“She lied to me.”
“Yes.”
I turned toward him.
“She saved me.”
Quade’s expression was gentle.
“Maybe.”
That word frightened me more than anything.
Maybe.
Why would my mother save me if she had helped poison me?
Unless saving me had never been the plan.
We reviewed every frame.
Two weeks after the first meeting, my mother returned.
Another envelope.
Another conversation.
Later, Dr.
Crane appeared.
Then Marian Cole from Fallow Bridge.
Then someone from Kessler, Rowe and Finch.
Everyone connected to my death had been inside my husband’s office.
And my mother had been present.
My supposed rescue collapsed in my mind.
“What if Julian hadn’t seen me?”
I whispered.
Quade understood instantly.
“If your mother knew you were alive…”
“She could have left me in the coffin.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Because Julian announced it.”
The room went silent.
If a seven-year-old boy had not looked through the coffin opening—
I might have awakened underground.
Or died before waking.
My mother had not saved me because she loved me.
She had removed a problem before anyone else could discover it.
Quade leaned forward.
“Renee, where is Deborah now?”
My blood chilled.
“At the cottage.”
“Does she think you’re there?”
“Yes.”
