I’m frozen as she looks at me, so lost. “I don’t think you need to worry about that just now.”
“And the house,” she goes on, as if she’s not hearing me. “Will I have to move out? Will I have to close our accounts and give everything to—” Her mouth clamps shut, a hardness coming over her eyes. “I suppose it’s all his now.”
“That’s not true,” I say, bending my leg beneath me as I perch on the bed beside her. I don’t need to ask who she’s talking about. “You’re his wife, that must mean…something. Legally. Financially.” I want to tell her Daniel wouldn’t have left her in the position to be destitute, but at this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him. “And even if it doesn’t, Killian wouldn’t ever just toss you out in the cold.”
“How do you know?” she asks, turning her agonized eyes on me. “You know your brother. He’s so spiteful and mean. He’s always hated me.”
I shift uncomfortably, unable to disagree without lying. “You don’t need to worry about this now,” I repeat. There’s a throw blanket at the foot of the bed, and I drag it over her, tucking her in the same way she once tucked me in.
“There’s so much to do,” she mutters, clutching the blanket to her chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I stress, taking her hand in mine. It seems wrong somehow to borrow the words of a man she thinks so little of, but I do, remembering Dimitri assuring me with them on New Year’s Eve. “People like us always find a way.”
This makes something in her eyes finally spark. “You’re all I have now.” The grin she gives me is watery and limp, but when she squeezes my hand, her grip is strong. “My little storybook. My perfect fairytale.”
The sobs come then.
Deep, body-wracking, ugly sobs.
I hold her, and try so hard to rearrange things in my head. I pet her hair and pretend that I’m not responsible for her grief and hurt. I pull the mask over my face and become the fairytale she needs.
Because the one she married into is gone.
I’ve barely walked into the den when Tristian stands and asks, “How’s Posey?”
“Knocked out on sleeping pills. For now, at least.” I drop my bag onto the chair, surveying the men around me. I hide my surprise that Killian is back so soon. For some reason, I’d had it in my mind that they’d… keep him. Hold him. Detain? Isn’t that what they call it?
The atmosphere in the room is heavy and oppressively quiet, and for a long stretch of time, no one says anything.
Slowly, Tristian sits back down.
Killian’s sitting in his leather armchair with his head resting all the way back. His right hand is balancing a glass of something amber on his knee, finger tapping the glass. “What did the detective say?” He doesn’t look at me when he speaks, eyes fixed on the glowing embers in the fireplace.
My stomach cramps with hot, churning acid. “He was asking Mom questions. Looking for enemies. Suspects.”
Killian nods, eyes reflecting the flames in the fireplace. “And?”
I tuck my hair back from my face, huffing. “She thought you did it.” His eyebrows twitch, but aside from that, he gives no reaction. “And when you had an alibi, she brought up Dimitri.”
“Typical,” Dimitri mutters. “It’s always the poor guy.” He’s hunched over the console table behind the couch Tristian is currently occupying, fingertip tapping the trackpad of a laptop. Where Killian and Tristian are both nursing glasses of the amber liquid, Dimitri has opted for the entire bottle. He hasn’t even glanced at me since I arrived, eyes pinched with focus at whatever’s on the screen. Even when he brings the bottle to his mouth for a long swig, he doesn’t look away.
Tristian sees the question in my eyes. “I was able to get access to the coroner’s files, but they haven’t updated the initial report yet.” He jabs a thumb to the space behind him, in Dimitri’s direction. “This one’s been refreshing the page for two hours.”
Standing awkwardly in the middle of the den, I say the one question that’s been bouncing around inside my mind all day. “Is it really him?”
Killian lifts the glass on his knees, speaking against the rim. “It’s him.”
Even though I know no one could possibly be as certain as Killian, I still wait for something more concrete. Something to make this real. Something that will drag me out of this dream-like trance.