“I do think he did it. I think he was a psychopath.” It was the only thing that made sense to her. There hadn’t been anyone else in the vicinity that they could tell from the distance of a hundred and fifty years. The evidence was lousy, the facts all open for dispute. But no one had doubted that Jonathon Thiroux had been in the room. And it seemed the most logical explanation to Sara. In 1849 they hadn’t known what a psychopath was, nor had they access to forensic analysis. But the whole point of Gabriel’s book was that both were irrelevant when a conviction was at the mercy of a judge and jury influenced by the media.

Yet she thought he did it.

She added, “I think it’s natural to be biased if he’s an ancestor of yours. But I don’t think you have any reason to conclude that anyone other than Thiroux did it.” For some reason, she felt irritated with him. The whole case took on a different perspective knowing that he did in fact have some sort of personal stake in it. Not that she was any different. She’d withheld her own history from him too.

Yet she was still irritated, irrationally or not.

“And I think Rafe Marino killed your mother.”

“What?” Sara went from irritated to furious. “Why would you even say that? I told you it’s not Rafe.”

“Why are you so sure? Is it because you have feelings for him?”

Sara’s face went hot and her hand flew up. “Oh, you did not just say that.”

That Gabriel of all people would accuse her of pining for her mother’s lover made her furious. “Why can’t a man and a woman like each other without people assuming that they’re harboring secret love?”

“I don’t mean that you had a relationship, I just mean that if you care about him, it would be really hard to accept that he could do something so horrible. You said yourself that you didn’t want to believe he could be capable of that kind of violence because it called into question your judgment.”

“He didn’t do it.” Maybe that was just her being stubborn. But damn it, she had seen the way Rafe had looked at her mom. “My mom wasn’t easy to love, and he loved her.”

“People kill those they claim to love.”

“Like Jonathon Thiroux killed Anne Donovan?”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “I don’t believe he ever claimed to love her. Or she him. But he doesn’t seem like a man capable of murder.”

Sara threw up her hands in exasperation. “Neither does Rafe! You’re not using the same argument, the same standard for both cases.”