Chapter 9: Friday
Graham called at half past two on Friday afternoon.
"The interview lasted four hours," he said.
"Robert attended with his solicitor.
He gave a prepared statement.
They've asked him not to leave the country."
Alexander was sitting across from me at the kitchen table.
I watched his face.
"What does that mean for the inquiry?" he asked.
"It means they have enough to keep it open and moving.
The financial records from Aldermoor came in this morning.
There are payments — historical payments — that they want to ask him about in relation to the original investigation.
Payments to two of the three witnesses who confirmed his account."
I set my cup down.
"He paid the witnesses," Alexander said.
"That's what they're looking at, yes."
After Graham rang off, we sat for a while without speaking.
Outside, the neighbor's children were playing in the garden next door.
Ordinary Saturday sounds drifting through the window.
"He paid people to say he tried to catch him," Alexander said finally.
"Yes."
"He let Diana spend fourteen years being called unstable.
He let Ethan carry that for fourteen years." He stopped.
"He looked me in the eye a hundred times."
I didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything useful to say.
"I keep thinking about Lily," he said.
"She pointed at him.
She just — pointed.
She didn't know what she was doing.
She just knew he'd hurt you."
"She knew exactly what she was doing," I said.
"She's three.
She just hasn't learned yet that you're supposed to stay quiet."
Alexander looked at me.
"Neither have you," he said.
"That's why we're here."
Three weeks later, Robert was formally charged.
Misconduct in public office in relation to the original inquiry.
Witness interference.
The suspicious death investigation remained open pending further forensic review of the original scene evidence.
Graham called to tell us.
I was in the garden with Lily, watching her try to teach the dog to sit.
"It's done," Graham said.
"For now.
There'll be a long process ahead.
But the charges are filed."
"Thank you," I said.
I put the phone in my pocket.
"Mama, he did it!" Lily shrieked.
The dog had sat down, more by accident than instruction, and she was beside herself with triumph.
"He did," I said.
"Good boy."
She ran to me and grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the dog, and I let her pull me, and the afternoon was very ordinary and very warm, and I thought about Diana Marsh sitting alone for fourteen years with something nobody believed, and I thought about Ethan carrying a secret that had bent him into someone who laughed at the wrong moment, and I thought about Robert in a room somewhere with his solicitor, finally running out of versions of the story.
And I thought about Lily's hand pointing across that silent ballroom.
She had just pointed at the truth.
May you like
That was all.
Sometimes that's the whole thing.
