The charges included negligent homicide for Catherine Reyes’s death — the statute of limitations had not expired due to the concealment — and a second charge related to Frank’s death, pending the toxicology results.
I read the charging document at Miriam’s kitchen table.
She sat across from me with her hands around a cup of tea, and when I looked up she was already watching me.
“Frank would have wanted to be here for this,” I said.
“He is,” she said simply.
I folded the document and set it down.
Outside, the afternoon light was coming through the window at a low angle, the kind of light that makes ordinary rooms look briefly like something more.
I thought about Frank at twenty-three, falling in love with a woman named Catherine.
I thought about him standing at the hospital window after she was gone, holding a daughter he hadn’t known how to protect.
