Chapter 24: What They Earned

Tobias did not run when I reached him.

He stood with the red can at his feet and the light of the fire on his face.

"I wanted it to be me," he said.

"Good," I said.

I put my arm through his, and the three of us watched the roof come down.

Rowan's men kept the neighbors back and the fire engines out of the yard until the walls were gone.

Near dawn, when the embers had gone grey, I walked into the ashes with a pair of tongs.

The bolt lay in the middle, black and bent.

I picked it up and dropped it into Rowan's palm.

"Keep it somewhere I can't find it," I said.

"The sea," he said, and nodded.

Three days later the sentences came down.

Delphine got twelve years for poisoning Tobias and for the attempt on Rowan.

She cried in the dock until the judge asked her to stop.

My father was indicted for the guardianship fraud, and the consent signed in his study.

His lawyers took half his money and the bank took the rest.

My mother moved with him to a rented room above a dry cleaner's on the other side of the city.

The letters started to come the following week.

The first was from Leland, in blue ink, from the prison.

The second was from Delphine, on lined paper, in a round hand that sloped to the right.

They both began the same way:

*Please forgive me, Faye.*

I read them once, standing in the hall of the grey house.

Rowan came and stood behind me.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Not today."

I put them in the drawer of the hall table, under the spare keys.

Then I went to work.

It was the second Monday after the wedding.

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