Liam still didn’t move. She wanted him to sit or lean against something. To prepare him for the blow she’d only partially landed so far.

“One day I followed them. Listened outside.” The memory ran in Gabby’s head. She could see it and tried to blink it out, but it shouted at her, demanding her attention. “Baines talked about how Natalie was running through the money too fast. How the royalties weren’t what they’d once been. How there wouldn’t be enough.”

Liam went back to shaking his head, as if he could physically stop the words from penetrating his mind.

“The other man said something about spreading a rumor. About how if people thought Natalie had money in the house she might get robbed. She could be the victim of a home invasion, and that would solve ‘the problem.’”

“You’re wrong,” Liam said. “She didn’t keep money there. Not more than a few dollars. She didn’t need to carry money because she didn’t go anywhere.”

He sounded so rational. She needed him to understand this was anything but. “We know that, but this was a story. Subterfuge to explain what happened next. They were talking about your sister and not being able to get access to her money, and ‘problem’ was the word they used. One week later, Natalie’s furnace malfunctioned. All the fire alarms also malfunctioned.”

“Stop.”

Talking about this slowly killed her, and she could see it was destroying him, too. Chipping away at what he believed and replacing it with something too sinister to bear. “The forensic pathologist referenced sleeping pills. Baines insisted she’d been self-medicating, but we both know she didn’t take pills before that. She drank to self-medicate, and there was no alcohol in the house. The nurse had gotten rid of it. Only Baines had ever seen her take sleeping pills. You didn’t buy them. Neither did her nurse.”

“I said stop.” Liam swallowed a few times before talking again.

She closed her eyes because that was easier than looking at him. “You asked me to explain. I’m trying.”

“Did you confront Baines with your suspicions? Did you try to stop whatever you thought was going to happen to Natalie?” he asked.

Her shame, all that guilt over her failure to step in, never lessened. It burned as bright today as back then. The what if thoughts that ran in a loop in her head. “I asked him about the man. He lied, insisting it was a guy coming around, asking to do odd jobs around our house for money.”

“But that’s not what you heard.”