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.
