The sympathy didn’t disappear exactly.
It just stopped being the most important thing on his face.
“You need to be very careful,” he said, “about what you do with information like that.
A frightened old woman’s memory from forty years ago.
A dying man’s letter written on painkillers.” His voice was still gentle.
Still kind.
“That’s not evidence, Claire.
That’s grief looking for somewhere to go.
If you take that to anyone official, you will cause enormous pain to this family for nothing.
You will drag Frank’s name through something ugly right after his death.
Is that what you want?”
“I want to know what happened to my mother.”
“Your mother was Susan.” He said it firmly.
“She raised you.
She loved you.
Catherine Reyes was a woman who d*ed in a hospital bed, and it was a tragedy, and Frank never fully recovered from it.
But that doesn’t mean—”
“Where were you that night, Gerald?”
The kitchen went very quiet.
His jaw moved once.
“I was there to support Frank.
That’s where I was.”
“Were you in her room?”
“I may have looked in.
I don’t remember every—”
“The nurse remembered.”
He stood up.
His chair scraped back and he stood up, and he looked down at me, and for one moment the careful kindness was completely gone and I saw something underneath it that I recognized as the truth.
“Whatever Frank wrote in that letter,” he said, “he was a sick old man who spent thirty years turning a tragedy into a conspiracy because he couldn’t accept that sometimes people just d*e.
I loved Frank.
I love you.
And I am telling you, as someone who has been part of this family your entire life, that you should put those papers away and let your father rest in peace.”
He picked up his coat.
“Don’t do this, Claire.
For your own sake.”
He walked to the door.
“Gerald.”
He stopped but didn’t turn.
“Frank knew you were coming back to the hospital that afternoon,” I said.
