In the room, before—”
“Because Gerald was coming back.” She said it quietly, like a fact she had been carrying for hours.
“Gerald called the hospital that afternoon.
Frank heard the nurse confirm he was on his way.
That’s why Frank sent you out.
He needed you gone before Gerald arrived.
He needed you safe and moving toward the truth before Gerald could get to you first.”
The last words Frank had ever said to me.
*Go there.
Now.*
Not a dying man’s confusion.
A warning.
My phone lit up on the cushion beside me.
A text from Gerald: *Heard the news about Frank.
So sorry, sweetheart.
I didn’t reply to Gerald’s text that night.
I sat with it on the screen for a long time, reading it the way you re-read something when you know the words are the same but the meaning has changed entirely.
*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.
And there’s a restraining order filed in 2014 — a woman named Diane Kowalski.
It was dropped after six months.”
I wrote the names down on the back of an envelope.
“He’s not who he presents himself as,” Paulson said.
“I want you to meet with me today.
Bring everything Frank gave you — the letter, the birth certificate, the nurse’s statement.
All of it.”
“He’s going to expect to hear from me,” I said.
“Gerald.
He texted last night.
If I go silent, he’ll know something is wrong.”
Paulson thought for a moment.
