Gerald’s expression moved through something complicated and landed on sympathy.
“Oh, sweetheart.
That must have been a shock.
Frank should have told you years ago — I always thought so.
But he was protecting you.
That was Frank.”
“From what, though?” I asked.
“What was he protecting me from?”
“From grief, I suppose.
From questions that didn’t have good answers.”
“I found a letter too,” I said.
“Frank wrote it recently.
While he was ill.”
Gerald picked up his mug again.
A small recalibration of his hands.
“He wrote about Catherine’s death,” I said.
“He had questions about it.
He’d been looking into it for a long time.”
“Frank had a lot of time to think in that hospital.” Gerald’s voice was gentle, careful.
“Illness does things to the mind, Claire.
It makes people look for reasons, for meaning.
It’s not uncommon to—”
“He found a nurse,” I said.
“From the night Catherine d*ed.
She wrote a statement.”
The mug went back to the table.
This time it stayed there.
“A statement about what?”
“About who was in the corridor that night.
Who went into the room.” I looked at him.
“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.”
