Chapter 5: The Smile That Never Meant Anything
I called him back that evening.
I had spent the drive home deciding exactly what I would say and exactly what I would not.
David sat across the kitchen table with his hands flat on the surface, watching me.
Mae had gone to lie down.
The envelope was locked in David's office safe.
Gareth answered on the second ring.
"Natty, sweetheart.
I've been thinking about you.
How are things?"
The warmth in his voice was seamless.
It always had been.
I had spent my entire adult life hearing that warmth and feeling safe inside it.
"I'm all right," I said.
"Busy.
I actually wanted to ask you something."
"Of course.
Anything."
"Do you remember the name of the solicitor my father used?
The private one, not the business one.
I'm trying to sort through some old paperwork and I can't find the contact details."
A pause.
Very brief.
The kind most people wouldn't notice.
"Goodness.
That's going back a long way." Another pause.
"I'm not sure I ever knew that one, actually.
Your father kept his personal affairs quite separate.
You know how he was."
"I do," I said.
"Yes."
"Is everything all right?
You sound a little—"
"I'm fine.
Just tired.
Thank you, Gareth."
I ended the call.
David looked at me.
"He lied."
"Immediately." I set the phone down.
"He knew the solicitor.
He went there himself, the week after the fire, trying to find out what my father had left behind.
Clara's father documented the visit.
It's in the notes she gave us."
"So he knows the documents exist."
"He's always known.
He just didn't know where they were."
The next morning I met Detective Sergeant Ruth Calloway at a coffee shop two towns over.
She was in her fifties, compact and unhurried, with the kind of stillness that comes from decades of listening to people lie.
She read through the documents without speaking.
She looked at the photograph for a long time.
"The property in this photograph," she said.
"It was transferred out of your father's name six weeks before the fire.
Into a holding company.
That holding company is still active." She looked up.
"Gareth Aldren is listed as sole director."
"He took it," I said.
"He took everything and then made sure my father couldn't prove it."
"The signed statement your father prepared is detailed enough to reopen the original investigation into the fire," Calloway said.
"The fire was ruled accidental at the time.
Given what's here, I don't believe it was." She closed the folder.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly.
Is the woman staying with you willing to give a formal statement?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
"Her memory is still fragmentary.
Some things are coming back.
Others aren't."
"Even a partial statement, corroborating the morning visit and the threat, would be significant.
Combined with these documents—" She tapped the folder.
"This is enough to begin."
I drove home and went straight to Mae.
She was in the garden, sitting on the low stone wall at the edge of the lawn, looking at nothing in particular.
I sat beside her.
"There's a detective," I said.
"She wants to talk to you.
Not today.
When you're ready.
She just needs you to tell her what you told me — the man, the morning, the argument, the threat."
Mae looked at her hands.
"What if I get things wrong?
What if I remember it wrong?"
"You won't be on trial.
You're a witness."
"I've been nobody for twenty years, Natty." Her voice was quiet.
"I don't know how to be somebody again."
I took her hand.
It was the first time I had done that.
She looked down at our hands together and didn't pull away.
"You don't have to be somebody," I said.
"You just have to tell the truth."
She was quiet for a long moment.
"He smiled at me," she said.
"That morning.
When he saw me in the hallway.
He smiled like he was deciding something." She paused.
"I've never forgotten that smile.
Even when I forgot everything else."
Three days later, Gareth called again.
I let it ring.
He left a voicemail — cheerful, easy, asking if I wanted to come to Sunday lunch, saying he hadn't seen me in too long.
Then, an hour later, a second call.
This time he didn't leave a message.
Then a text: *Heard you've had a houseguest.
Hope everything's okay.
Call me.*
David read the text over my shoulder.
"He's fishing," David said.
"He's nervous," I said.
My phone rang again.
Not Gareth this time.
Calloway.
"We've pulled the original fire investigation records," she said.
"There was a witness statement taken at the time — a neighbor who reported seeing a man leaving your family's property approximately forty minutes before the fire started.
The statement was filed and never followed up."
"Why not?"
"The investigating officer retired six months later.
The case was closed as accidental.
The statement was buried in the archive." A pause.
"The neighbor described the man as tall, well-dressed, wearing a gold ring on his right hand."
I sat down on the stairs.
"She's still alive," Calloway said.
"The neighbor.
May you like
She's eighty-one.
And she remembers everything."
