So the twenty-five thousand had been payoff money, blackmail. Yes, she could believe that the man in the photo had thought money would ensure anything.

“I got frantic. I couldn’t believe he was threatening to take away everything I’d ever wanted. He could’ve done it, too.” Stan wiped at the sweat that beaded on his upper lip. “He would’ve done it without a second thought. I shouted at him. I told him he wasn’t going to take Joyce and our baby away from me. I told him we’d go away, we didn’t need his filthy money. He opened the cash box and showed me all those bills, as if it would tempt me. I knocked it out of his hands.”

His breath was coming quickly now, heavily, as if he were reliving that moment—the anger, the despair. Maggie felt her pity well up to tangle with her fear.

“He never lost his temper. Never once. He just bent down and scooped the money back in the box. He thought I wanted more. He never understood, wasn’t capable of understanding. When it got to the point where he saw I wasn’t going to take the money and go away, he picked up my gun just as calmly as he’d picked up the box. I knew, as sure as I’d ever know anything, that he’d kill me where I stood and he’d get away with it. Somehow he’d get away with it. All I could think was that I’d never see Joyce again, never hold our baby. I grabbed for the gun—it went off over my shoulder. We started struggling.”

He was panting now, his eyes glazed. Maggie could visualize the struggle between man and boy as clearly as if it were happening in front of her eyes. She shut them. Then she saw the scene in the film she’d scored in which overpowering need had erupted into irrevocable violence. But this was real and needed no music to spark the drama.

“He was strong—that old man was strong. I knew I’d be dead if I didn’t get the gun away. Somehow—” Stan dragged both his hands up his face and into his hair. “Somehow I had it in my hands and was falling back. I’ll never forget—it was like a dream, a nightmare. I was falling back, and the gun went off.”

She could picture it, all too clearly. Both sympathetic and afraid, Maggie dared to speak. “But it was an accident, self-defense.”