He Called Every Truth a Lie novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: On the Record

Inez lay in a hospital bed on the fourth floor with her wrist in plaster and her hip in a brace.

An officer sat by the door.

The detective stood at the foot of the bed with a small recorder in his hand.

Her pearls were gone, and her silver hair was flat against the pillow.

She was sixty-three, and for the first time she looked it.

"Joanna," she said. "Sit."

"I'll stand."

"You always do." She turned her head on the pillow. "Sit, dear. I'm not going to touch you. I can't lift my own water."

I sat in the plastic chair.

"I'll say it all," Inez said. "For this man's machine, in your hearing, once. And then I never want to talk about it again."

The detective pressed the button.

"I decided in the second year that you were wrong for my son," she said. "A receptionist, no family, no money. You'd have taken him down to nothing. I changed the pills so you'd be calm, and then so you'd be quiet. When you began to notice, I made sure no one believed you."

"The stairs."

"I helped you down. I didn't think you'd get up."

"The soup."

"I wanted a scene in front of forty people. I wanted the end of it." She said it flatly. "I'd have called it a tragic accident, and Tristram would have wept, and everyone would have brought casseroles."

The detective's mouth tightened.

I did not move.

"Do you regret any of it?" I asked.

She thought about it.

"I regret the girl in the kitchen. She was frightened. I regret Toby." Her eyes slid toward the window. "I regret that you were stronger than you looked."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

I opened my tote bag and took out the black book with the gold letters.

It was heavier than I remembered.

I held it out to the detective.

"It's yours now. The first page is her handwriting. The key is in the back cover. The hundredth entry is false, and Tristram has said so."

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