Liam shrugged. “She needed extra help.”

Gabby knew the truth. The family lived on the edge of danger. Their father’s antics had bankrupted them. They’d lost a house and friends. The constant uncertainty had impacted Natalie the most. She’d grown up scared and wary. With absent, uninvolved parents, Natalie hadn’t gotten the services and help she needed, even though so much would have been provided by the state if her parents had reached out.

The learning issues compounded Natalie’s tendency for self-isolation, and the unraveling sped up the older she got. Her increasingly cloistered life and crippling anxieties demanded intervention. The money helped because it paid for a house and services. For therapy that Natalie used only on and off because her paranoia would flare and she’d block everyone, except her brothers, out of her life.

Here was the hard part. The unforgivable part. “But if anything happened to Natalie, the money from the trust went to you and Baines.”

Liam shook his head. “No.”

“No?” She knew she had those facts right because she’d sat in on meeting after meeting about the estate and about Natalie’s care.

“He didn’t kill her for money.” Liam stepped back, continuing to shake his head. “We took care of her. We were her guardians, but more than that, her protectors. For her whole life.”

The Fielding brothers. One of the reasons Gabby loved them both so much was because she’d seen them with Natalie. No one could make fun of her or hurt her. But Baines eventually broke her trust in the worst way possible.

“Baines started to . . . blame Natalie. She called him a lot. Took up a lot of his time.”

“We didn’t care about that.” Liam practically shouted the denial.

“You didn’t. You saw Natalie as a loving sister and accepted the responsibility. Baines began to think of her as a drain. I saw the toll her demands took on him. Natalie, fatherhood, work, me. It was a lot for him to handle. So, I tried to be the one Natalie went to, to be the go-between, but after so many years of leaning on the two of you, especially Baines, she couldn’t switch gears. Not fast enough to suit Baines.”

“You make him sound like a fucking monster.”

She didn’t say the obvious response. When it came to Natalie, at the end, he had been.

“A man started coming to our house. Baines would go outside with him, into that little shed we had at the back of the place we rented in Bethesda during the construction on our house.” She’d never seen Liam so pale, almost listing, as he stood there. “The guy was creepy. The kind of man who looked right through you, and you realized he was nothing but an empty, evil shell. No empathy or feelings.”