Chapter 8: What She Said When There Was Nothing Left to Say
She came through the front door still wearing her sunglasses.
She got three steps into the hallway before she stopped.
Detective Sousa was standing in the entrance to the living room.
Marcus was near the staircase.
Gerald was beside me.
Gwen looked at each of them in turn.
Then she looked at me.
She took her sunglasses off slowly.
"Franklin." Her voice was perfectly level.
"What is this?"
"I think you know," I said.
Something moved across her face — not fear, not yet.
Something more like calculation.
She was still deciding which version of herself to be.
"I don't know what's happening," she said.
"Gerald, what is going on?
Has something happened?"
Gerald said nothing.
Detective Sousa stepped forward.
"Ms.
Collier—"
Gwen's head turned sharply.
The calculation stopped.
That was the moment it ended — not when the officers came in, not when the accounts were frozen.
The moment Detective Sousa said that name.
"I don't know what you think you have," Gwen said.
Her voice had changed.
The warmth was gone.
What was underneath was flat and careful and nothing like the woman who had talked about Portugal the night before.
"Whatever someone has told you, they're mistaken."
"We have three passports," Detective Sousa said.
"We have a forged financial authorization with Mr.
Sterling's signature.
We have a second phone with call records.
And we have testimony from a prior case — Stuart Ames's daughter has already agreed to cooperate."
Gwen looked at me.
"You don't understand what your life was like," she said.
"Before me.
You were alone in this house talking to empty rooms.
I gave you two years.
I was good to you."
"You were performing," I said.
"Everyone performs, Franklin.
The difference is I was better at it than most."
"Howard Peck wasn't performing," I said.
"He was just an old man who believed you."
Something crossed her face then.
It was the first real thing I had seen from her since she walked through the door.
I don't know what it was.
I didn't spend time trying to name it.
"Diane Collier," Detective Sousa said, "you are under arrest for financial document fraud, forgery, and identity deception.
Additional charges related to the Peck case are under active review."
Gwen — Diane — looked at me one last time.
"You would have been happy," she said.
"If you'd just let it happen."
"No," I said.
"I wouldn't have been anything."
She didn't speak again after that.
I stood in my hallway and watched them walk her out through the front door.
Gerald stood beside me.
Neither of us said anything until the car was gone.
Then he said, quietly, "It's done, Franklin."
I nodded.
I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle.
May you like
My hands were steady.
I noticed that and thought it was worth noticing.
