“You went with Rafe?” Gabriel knew that actually from reading the articles online about Sara’s mother’s death, but he wanted to hear what Sara would say about him.

“It was completely normal to go with my mom’s boyfriend given that I don’t have any other family.” A finger slipped under her sunglasses and wiped at her eye, but he didn’t think she was crying. “At the time I didn’t realize he was the primary suspect. It only took the police five days to decide he was guilty and arrest him for murder, but it took nearly a year to acquit him in court.”

“Like John Thiroux.” Him. “Is that why you’re interested in this case? Or is it strictly your mother’s case that you want to solve?”

“No. I want to solve both. Though I don’t think my mother’s murder is solvable at this point. I came more to see if forensics could shed light on Anne’s case, and yes, because there are strange similarities. The weapon used, the method of the murderer—killing them in bed. Boyfriends accused. Boyfriends who discovered them.” And something else that Sara suspected no one else knew, not even Gabriel. That Anne Donovan was the great-grandmother of Jessie Michaels. That before her mother had died, she had received a copy of the original newspaper article announcing Anne Donovan’s murder.

Sara hadn’t told the police, or Rafe, or Gabriel what her mother had gotten anonymously in the mail thirty-six hours before her death, because Sara had the horrible feeling that only one man could have known about the connection, and confirmation of that would shatter her. Some answers were far worse than never knowing at all. She shouldn’t even be talking to Gabriel about her feelings, emotions over her mother’s case, but he was easy to talk to. He stood and listened, and there was never any judgment written on his face. It was like he understood he had no right to cast stones, but at the same time he was capable of compassion, rational discourse.

“I would guess there have been a lot of boyfriends accused of killing their lovers. And I’m sure a large percentage actually did it.”

“Do you think he did it? John Thiroux?” Sara stared hard at the tomb, at the crumbling square where a name and date should have been, but was gone, obliterated, like the woman behind the stone. The surface blurred and crossed in front of her eyes, the heat enveloping Sara and closing up her throat.

“I haven’t read all the documents yet. We don’t have the DNA results from the knife back yet. I don’t know if he did it or not.”