I thought the worst thing my grandson could tell me was that my fiancée had hurt his mother—then I saw the document bearing my name.

Hannah looked smaller in the hospital bed than she had any right to.

She was thirty-one years old.

She had her mother's jaw and my stubbornness and a laugh that filled whatever room she was in.

The woman in the bed had a bandage above her left temple, a cannula taped to the back of her hand, and both eyes closed.

I sat down in the chair beside her and didn't say anything for a moment.

Detective Rourke gave me that moment.

He was younger than his voice — mid-forties, jacket over a plain shirt, the particular stillness of someone trained to watch rooms rather than fill them.

"She woke briefly about an hour ago," he said.

"Recognised the nurse.

Asked about Leo."

"Leo is safe.

He's at the hotel."

"Good." He pulled the second chair around so we were both facing Hannah rather than each other.

"The neighbour — Mrs.

Alderton, lives two doors down — she heard a door close hard at approximately eight forty-five.

Looked out her front window.

Saw a woman she didn't recognise leaving your daughter's house quickly.

Dark coat, dark hair."

"Florence has dark hair."

"Yes." He didn't write anything.

He was watching me.

"Mrs.

Alderton found Hannah twenty minutes later.

The front door was unlocked.

Hannah was at the bottom of the stairs."

I looked at the bandage above Hannah's temple.

"The stairs," I said.

"The banister on the upper landing has a scuff mark consistent with someone grabbing it hard and missing.

There's no corresponding mark on Hannah's hand." He paused.

"She also had her phone in her pocket.

If she'd lost her balance, most people drop what they're holding."

"She was pushed."

"I can't say that yet."

"But you think it."

He looked at me steadily.

"I think the evidence is consistent with more than one explanation, and I think the timeline is worth examining carefully."

I put my hand over Hannah's.

Her fingers were cool.

"The drive," I said.

"How much of it have you seen?"

"She walked us through the documents by phone last night.

We hadn't had time to obtain anything formally." He leaned forward slightly.

"Mr.

Prescott, the account the transfers were going to — the name on it is Cassandra Vail.

Does that mean anything to you?"

It didn't.

I said so.

"Florence Vail," he said carefully, "was born Florence Cassandra Vail.

Cassandra is her middle name."

The monitor beside Hannah's bed continued its quiet, indifferent rhythm.

"The account is hers," I said.

"The account was opened fourteen months ago.

Two months after you and Ms.

Vail became engaged." He sat back.

"The total transferred is just over four hundred and twenty thousand dollars."

Four hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

I had built Prescott Homes over thirty years.

I had worked through a recession, through my wife's illness, through the years after when I wasn't sure I wanted to build anything at all.

The company was worth considerably more than four hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

But that wasn't the point.

The point was that she had sat across from me at dinner tables and laughed at my jokes and held my hand at my wife's grave — she had stood beside me at Margaret's grave and held my hand — and the entire time she had been moving money out of accounts I hadn't checked because I trusted her.

Because I had been lonely.

Because I had been sixty-three and lonely and she had been warm and certain and she had made me feel, for the first time in years, like someone worth choosing.

"Mr.

Prescott."

I looked up.

Hannah's eyes were open.

They were glassy and tired and the left one was slightly swollen at the corner, but they were open and they were looking at me, and something in my chest that had been locked since nine seventeen that morning came loose all at once.

"Hey, bug," I said.

My voice came out wrong.

"You didn't get married." Her voice was a dry scrape.

"No."

"Good." She closed her eyes again.

Then opened them.

"Leo?"

"Safe.

Ruth has him."

She exhaled.

Her hand turned under mine and held on.

"I tried to tell you," she said.