Chapter 9: What Dolores Had Been Hiding
She sat down at the kitchen table — her side, the one near the counter — and she folded her hands in front of her the way she did when she was choosing her words carefully.
Thomas sat across from her.
He put his phone on the table between them, screen up, so she could read the message if she wanted to.
She glanced at it once and looked away.
"How much do you know," she said, "about how Lily's mother d*ed?"
Thomas was still.
"A cardiac event.
She was thirty-four.
The doctors said it was a congenital condition no one had known about."
"That's what the death certificate says."
"Dolores."
She looked at him.
"I'm not saying it's wrong.
I'm saying it's incomplete."
He waited.
"In the six months before she d*ed," Dolores said, "your wife was frightened.
I don't mean anxious.
I mean frightened in a specific way — the way a person is frightened when they know something is wrong and they don't know how to say it without sounding like they've lost their mind."
Thomas's hands were flat on the table.
"What was she frightened of?"
"She didn't tell me directly.
She told me around the edges.
She said she'd found something in your correspondence — something she didn't understand but that didn't sit right with her.
She said she'd asked someone about it and been told she was misreading it.
She said she didn't believe that."
"What correspondence?"
"She didn't say.
She was careful.
She was—" Dolores stopped.
"She was protecting me, I think.
From knowing too much."
Thomas said: "Who did she ask?"
Dolores looked at him.
"Martin Hale," she said.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"She knew him before you did," Dolores said.
"He was introduced to her through a mutual acquaintance, about a year before you met his sister.
She trusted him.
She thought he was a friend of the family." She paused.
"I don't think he was."
Thomas stood up.
He walked to the window and stood with his back to her, looking out at the dark garden.
"Why didn't you tell me this?" he said.
"After she d*ed.
Why didn't you—"
"Because I had no proof.
Because I had a feeling and a few half-sentences and a woman who was gone and couldn't confirm any of it.
Because you were grieving and Lily was two years old and I told myself I was probably wrong." Her voice was steady but the steadiness cost her something.
"And because six months after she d*ed, Martin Hale introduced you to his sister.
And I watched that happen and I told myself again that I was probably wrong."
Thomas turned around.
"You think it wasn't a coincidence," he said.
"I think," Dolores said carefully, "that a woman who was frightened of something died of a heart condition no one had ever detected.
And then the man she'd gone to for help introduced the grieving husband to his sister.
And that sister spent eight months in this house, alone with a child, working very hard to make sure no one in this house trusted anyone else in it." She paused.
"I think those things might be connected.
I don't know how.
I don't have proof.
But I think Patricia Osei should know."
Thomas looked at her for a long time.
"Why are you telling me now?" he said.
"After all this time."
Dolores met his eyes.
"Because she sent that message.
Because she brought Lily's mother into it.
And because if she's willing to use a de@d woman as a weapon, then whatever I've been protecting by staying quiet — it isn't worth protecting anymore."
Thomas picked up his phone.
He looked at the message again.
*Ask Dolores what she's been hiding.*
"She knew," he said.
"She knew you knew something."
"She's been watching me for eight months," Dolores said.
"Trying to find out how much I knew.
Trying to decide whether I was a threat." She paused.
"That's why she wanted me dismissed.
It wasn't about the bread or the floors or any of the things she complained about.
It was about this."
Thomas sat back down.
"I'm going to call Patricia tonight," he said.
"Yes."
"And tomorrow I'm going to find out what was in that correspondence.
Whatever my wife found — it still exists somewhere.
Letters.
Files.
Something."
"Yes."
He looked at Dolores.
"Is there anything else?"
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she reached into the pocket of her cardigan — not the apron now, she'd taken it off after dinner — and placed a small object on the table.
A key.
Old, brass, the kind that fits a lockbox or a small cabinet.
"She gave me this," Dolores said.
"Two weeks before she d*ed.
She said if anything ever happened to her, I should give it to someone I trusted completely." She looked at the key on the table between them.
"I've been waiting eleven years to find that person."
Thomas looked at the key.
Then he looked at Dolores.
"Where does it go?" he said.
"I don't know," she said.
"But I think you might."
He picked it up.
Turned it over in his hand.
It was heavier than it looked — solid, old, with a small mark stamped into the bow that he almost didn't notice.
He held it closer to the light.
The mark was a letter.
May you like
Stamped small and clean into the brass.
The letter *H.*
