But he checked to make sure. “Good. It’s the only way someone like you gets through this. Did you believe that he would have killed Marcelline if he thought it would’ve helped him?”

The misery dragged Carly’s voice to a place she couldn’t get to. She nodded.

“I had what I came for. I had the painting. You needed him stopped.”

The peg turned. Owen’s voice. The protective curl of his huge shoulders shielding himself. The cramped space between his pained eyebrows.

“You didn’t have what you came for. You needed him stopped, too.”

Owen’s jaw muscles flared. “Fair enough. So I stopped him.”

“There wasn’t another way,” Carly said in something between a question and a declaration.

“He lied. Cheated. Stole. Schemed. And that’s only what he did to me. He threatened people, he manipulated them and got some of them killed. He put people in danger who didn’t agree to any of this. You. Your mother. He brought it on himself.”

It was true. But it wasn’t the only thing that was true.

“He was John, too, you know,” she said. “Not just Jonathan like you knew him. All of it wasn’t fake.”

“Perhaps.”

She glared at him.

“Fine. He was. I believe you, because somehow I can’t help myself. But you have to let him be this, now. Whatever else you want to think of him, you need to make peace with the idea of the Jonathan I knew. Because I’m not wrong either.

“If you want the life you’re meant to have, you will hear me. If you blow this up, it will take an entirely different direction. John will have Jonathaned your life, and your mother’s life, into something you won’t recognize. Ask Marcelline how I know this.”

Carly found more tears that ran, slowed, and dried by the time they pulled into the hotel lot. Owen gave her Marcelline’s key.

“It’s room 311. Go on in. Get cleaned up. Don’t call anyone. I’ll bring her back, and the two of you will figure out what’s next.”

“That’s it, then?”

“You’ll be okay.”

She looked at him.

“Truly. You’re going to rule the world someday.”

“I don’t even know where you live.” They were in the stupid end-of-phone-calls awkwardness, but times a thousand. “Do you think you will ever talk to me again?”

“God, I hope not.”

It caught her off guard. Funny and painful and somehow frightening. “That’s mean.”

Owen shrugged. It looked weird in his massive chest. “I am not meant for hanging around with. Small talk. I am not meant for Christmas cards and what do you call it? Snapchat. I am not meant for young ladies who will rule the world. This situation needed a good bad guy or a bad good guy. You can decide where you’ll put me in this story.”