“Who was alone with Catherine before she d*ed.”
Gerald was quiet for a long moment.
Then something in his face changed.
The sympathy didn’t disappear exactly.
It just stopped being the most important thing on his face.
“You need to be very careful,” he said, “about what you do with information like that.
A frightened old woman’s memory from forty years ago.
A dying man’s letter written on painkillers.” His voice was still gentle.
Still kind.
“That’s not evidence, Claire.
That’s grief looking for somewhere to go.
If you take that to anyone official, you will cause enormous pain to this family for nothing.
You will drag Frank’s name through something ugly right after his death.
Is that what you want?”
“I want to know what happened to my mother.”
“Your mother was Susan.” He said it firmly.
“She raised you.
She loved you.
Catherine Reyes was a woman who d*ed in a hospital bed, and it was a tragedy, and Frank never fully recovered from it.
But that doesn’t mean—”
“Where were you that night, Gerald?”
The kitchen went very quiet.
His jaw moved once.
“I was there to support Frank.
That’s where I was.”
“Were you in her room?”
“I may have looked in.
I don’t remember every—”
“The nurse remembered.”
He stood up.
His chair scraped back and he stood up, and he looked down at me, and for one moment the careful kindness was completely gone and I saw something underneath it that I recognized as the truth.
“Whatever Frank wrote in that letter,” he said, “he was a sick old man who spent thirty years turning a tragedy into a conspiracy because he couldn’t accept that sometimes people just d*e.
I loved Frank.
I love you.
And I am telling you, as someone who has been part of this family your entire life, that you should put those papers away and let your father rest in peace.”
He picked up his coat.
“Don’t do this, Claire.
For your own sake.”
He walked to the door.
“Gerald.”
He stopped but didn’t turn.
“Frank knew you were coming back to the hospital that afternoon,” I said.
“He sent me away before you arrived.
He wanted me safe.”
A long pause.
“Goodbye, Claire.” He opened the door.
“Call me when you’re thinking clearly.”
The door closed behind him.
I reached under the collar of my shirt and pressed the small button Paulson had shown me.
Three seconds later, my phone buzzed.
Paulson came to the house within the hour.
He sat across from me at the same table where Gerald had sat, and he played the recording back through his phone speaker, and we listened to Gerald’s voice fill Frank’s kitchen — *a frightened old woman’s memory, a dying man’s letter written on painkillers* — and when it ended Paulson set the phone face-down on the table.
“He never denied being in the room,” I said.
“No.
He didn’t.” Paulson looked at his notes.
“He said he may have looked in.
He said he didn’t remember every detail.
Those are not the words of someone who wasn’t there.” He paused.
“Combined with the nurse’s formal statement — she agreed to speak with us this morning, by the way — and the medical examiner’s preliminary review of your father’s chart, we have enough to open a formal investigation.”
“Into Catherine’s death.”
“Into both.” He met my eyes.
“The examiner found an anomaly in your father’s medication record from the afternoon of Gerald’s visit.
A dosage discrepancy.
It may have a routine explanation.
But it may not.”
I put my hands flat on the table.
“He k*lled them both,” I said.
“Catherine forty years ago.
And Frank last week.”
“I can’t confirm that yet.
But we are going to find out.” He gathered the documents carefully.
“I need to take these into evidence.
I’ll give you a full receipt for everything.”
“Take them.”
He paused before picking up Frank’s letter.
“Your father was meticulous.
Four pages, every detail sourced, the nurse’s contact information, the timeline.
He built a case, Claire.
He just needed someone to carry it forward.”
“He needed me to carry it forward,” I said.
“That’s why he sent me to Miriam.
He knew I’d find everything.
He knew I’d ask the right questions.”
Paulson nodded slowly.
“He trusted you to finish it.”
Gerald was brought in for formal questioning four days later.
