Chapter 23: Down the Road

Marlo's POV

The deputy stopped in front of the stage and took out his handcuffs.

"Mrs. Lindmark," he said. "I'm going to ask you to come with me."

"Not until I finish," said Bernadette.

She turned to the hall, with the lights bright on her silver hair.

"That man was on the dock when my son died," she said, clearly. "He recorded it himself. Ask yourselves why."

I stood up.

"Skye," I said. "Play the first minute again."

The speakers hissed, and a man's boots crunched toward a lit pier.

Over them, plain as a bell, came the stamp of a truck door and the click of a phone's red button.

"That is a truck pulling in," I said. "And that is Hamish's last text, timed twelve forty, asking his brother to come and record her."

Skye held up the photograph she had taken of the cracked phone's screen in her kitchen, for the front rows to read.

"He told her to call an ambulance, and she told him to wait. That's all he did on that dock."

Nobody spoke.

The vice chair rapped his cane on the floor.

"Take her out, Deputy," he said.

They took her down the aisle with her handbag clutched to her chest.

She didn't look at either of us.

At the double doors, she stopped and finally looked back at Orin, and her mouth moved.

I saw it plainly from where I stood.

It said, I did love you.

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