He swallowed and placed his cup on the island between them. “Which is why I apologized, and thanked you. You made me stay with you last night. Not because anything happened between us, but so you could make sure I didn’t do anything to myself. You wanted to keep me safe—even after I told you what I had done.”

He had been serious last night, emphatic about not wanting to live without Clare or with his own guilt. He did seem better this morning, but would that last? What about tonight, when he was alone again in their shared bedroom? Or after the funeral? What about when Eileen got on her flight and headed back to Colorado, leaving him completely alone in this architectural mammoth her sister had built, where every scrap of furniture, every linen, every piece of art, the very location was all Clare’s doing?

“Where is Clare’s gun now?”

Simon placed his cup on the island between them. “I wouldn’t do it,” he whispered. “Last night, everything…the realization that she was gone…forever. It hit me. And that feeling, of being…somehow responsible.” He shook his head. “But I don’t really want to die.”

Eileen nodded. “Where’s the gun?”

“The police still have it.”

“And will they return it?” she pressed.

“I don’t remember everything they said. That whole morning they were here; it’s just a blur in my head.”

“Okay, so if and when they do return it…what are you going to do with it?”

He was hesitating, staring at his cup. She watched him take a deep breath like he was trying to think of the right thing to say. Eventually he let out a fast sigh instead.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

His answer made Eileen all the more positive she would need to make sure Clare’s gun never came back to this house. Not that she didn’t believe him; Simon really didn’t want to die right now, and he was obviously relieved that Eileen had been here to keep him from making an impulsive and irrevocable decision last night. But he was reluctant to let the entire possibility, the potential exit strategy, go altogether. Because what if he changed his mind later?

“I’m going to need you to give me the number for the lead investigator,” she said, sounding more like her cop mother than she realized she was capable of. “I know there are a hundred other ways you could kill yourself, but the most statistically successful way will not be coming back through this front door.” The raw certainty of what needed to happen, and her own sense of authority to make it happen—it surprised her. She was drawing a line for Simon, a man she barely knew, and she felt a swell of righteousness that she was prepared to argue with him about. He needed to be kept safe.