Chapter 12: For Ronan, If She Lies

Preston met us at the side door of the townhouse in the dark.

He had a small brass key in his palm, and his hand was shaking.

"She locks it every night," he whispered. "I took the spare off the hook in her wing when she left."

Ronan looked at him for a long moment.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because she called Claire a resource," Preston said. "In front of me."

He swallowed.

"I've heard her say worse about people. I'd just never heard it about someone I lived with."

Ronan said nothing.

He nodded once, shortly, and followed him inside.

Honora's study was at the back of her wing.

It smelled of lilies and old paper.

A wide desk stood under a lamp, and behind it ran a wall of locked file drawers with brass pulls.

Preston opened the third drawer from the left with the key.

"She keeps everything on the board in here."

I put on my phone's flashlight and began lifting folders.

Most of it was dull. Board minutes, tax filings, a list of the other directors with notes beside their names.

Next to Ronan's name, in her small neat hand, she had written: Fond of the girl in the grey blazer.

I stopped breathing.

"That's me," I said.

"Claire," Ronan said.

"She wrote that in January. I didn't even know you'd looked at me."

He didn't answer.

His ears had gone red, and for the first time that week I laughed out loud, quietly, in the dark.

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