Chapter 22: Play It Back

Four hundred people turned to look at the glass doors.

Kirk was already standing in them.

He had not hidden, and he did not step back.

He walked into the light with his hands open at his sides, in the dark suit that was too tight across his shoulders.

"I'm Kirk Corliss," he said. "I'm Chadwick's brother, and I'm in love with Camilla."

"Nobody made her do anything."

Nobody laughed.

Someone near the front said, "Oh, that poor man," and I did not know which of us she meant.

One of the officers started toward him.

"Wait," the governor's wife said, quite sharply. "He brought the dead man in. Let him stand there."

Sheridan smiled at the room and pressed her fingers to the corner of her eye.

"He's been so convincing," she said, with a catch in her voice. "My sister has always trusted the wrong person. It breaks my heart."

She reached for me, and I stepped back.

"Camilla, darling. Tell them. You're confused."

I took my phone out of the green dress.

My mother had sewn a pocket into it that afternoon.

"There's something I'd like you all to hear," I said.

Sheridan had told me to keep the recording, and I had kept every second of it.

I held the phone to the microphone and pressed play.

My voice came first, shaky and small, from the cottage garden.

Then Chadwick's, reading out half a million dollars and a flat in Lisbon.

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