Fam had requested the old case file. The symptoms in Raymond’s death certificate were almost identical to mine.
She let that sit in the air between us for a moment, said good night, and left.
I lay in the dark of the hospital room with the heart monitor beeping its steady reassurance and understood something that took my breath. If Freya had done this before, then she had not simply helped Leo. She had taught him. The tea. The microdoses. The patience. The construction of a narrative around the victim that made her doubt herself before anyone else had reason to doubt her. This was not a son’s idea that his mother had assisted with. This was a mother’s method, passed to her son the way certain families pass down recipes, in the private language of demonstrated technique rather than written instruction.
The arrests happened on a Tuesday morning before the birds had fully committed to the day.
