“I just lost it. I opened the sack and took the snake out with my bare hands. I didn’t care if it was poisonous or not at that point. If it bit me, it bit me. I didn’t care. Bob’s feet were still tied. I was so angry that I threw the snake in his face.

“The snake bit him on the hand and slithered off. Bob froze. Neither of us knew if the snake was venomous or not. Then Bob clutched his arm, and I realized he was having a heart attack.” Her voice shuddered. “I untied him and tried to revive him.” She bit her lip. “I tried my best to remember my nursing training, but I knew he was dead.

“Then it started to rain. I panicked and I ran. For some reason I took the sack, I don’t know why.” Her eyes moved to Molloy again. “I tried to save him. I didn’t like leaving him out there, but I knew he’d be found. I’d have gone back to get him if he hadn’t.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone what happened?” Molloy asked.

Mary shook her head. She paused and looked up. “You know they went for a walk to the waterfall?”

“Glenevin?” I remembered stopping off there with Derek.

“My waterfall. I’d told him about it, but he went there with her.” She touched the chain around her neck again. “I wanted him to see what he’d missed out on, all these years. Where he’d have lived with me. But the first time he saw it was with his wife.”

I realized that Bob didn’t have the emotional intelligence to know how important that place was to her, to keep just one thing for her. Perhaps that’s what ended up being his downfall, his inability to rate other people’s feelings.

Mary’s voice was flat. “It’s all been such a waste.”

“But what about here?” I said, looking around at the huge kitchen. “What about your business? Surely, you’re proud of this.”

She looked at me in surprise. “This place? I hate this place. This was somewhere I built when I heard Bob had adopted his boys, when I knew we wouldn’t be having a family of our own. I’d have sold it in a heartbeat if Bob had ever …” She shook her head in disbelief. “I waited over thirty years for him to visit and the first time he comes, he brings his wife. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

I looked at her sad eyes, the grief for a man she loved, just as real and raw as if he’d died in an accident that she’d had nothing to do with. Like Derek, she had nothing left, nothing that mattered.