“Let me get this straight,” Delores said. “Even if Hannah hadn’t hit him, he would have died anyway.”

“That’s right, Lori. It was inevitable. Even if I’d been right there on the scene, there would have been no way to save him.”

“Did you hear that, dear?” Delores turned to Hannah. “He would have died anyway.”

“I heard.”

“Well, doesn’t that make you feel better?”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “No,” she said. “I killed him. It doesn’t matter when he would have died. Think about it, Mother. Anybody I hit and killed would have died anyway. Everybody dies, sooner or later.”

“Don’t say that, Hannah.” Delores gave a little shiver. “That’s morbid.”

“But it’s true,” Hannah argued. “There’s no getting away from it, Mother. I hit him and I killed him. It was an accident and I really don’t think it was my fault, but it happened. The person he fought with isn’t responsible for his death. I am.”

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

“Well, that was depressing,” Michelle said, propping her pajama-clad legs up on the coffee table, giving Moishe a scratch behind the ears, and taking a sip of the mango iced tea that Hannah had poured for her.

“Not really. I thought about all that while I was in jail. I can’t duck my responsibilities, but I don’t have to dwell on them. The best thing I can do for that man, at this point, is figure out who he is and exactly why he was there.”

“By doing that, you might clear yourself of the charges.”

“I doubt it, but that would be nice. I’m still going to have to live with the fact that I hit someone with my truck and killed him.”

“Can you live with that?”

“Yes. I have to. The first thing we have to do is find out who the man was and why he was here.”

“I know. And then we have to find out who he fought with. That was interesting about the ring. Now we have two rings to investigate.”

“Maybe not.” Hannah took a sip of the glass of white wine she’d poured for herself.

“What do you mean?”

“It could be the same ring. Doc said the second blow was delivered by a bare fist and he thought the man could have dropped the ring.”

“That’s possible, especially if it was too loose.”

“And if the man’s assailant made a quick getaway when he heard my truck coming, the victim could have picked it up and slipped it back on his finger before I hit him.”

“I guess it could have happened that way.” Michelle thought about that for a moment. “Then the ring you saw on the victim’s finger was really the ring his assailant was wearing when he delivered the first blow.”