His expression took on a twinge of hurt. “Ed had no intention of killing her. They were wrestling over the gun and it went off.”

She stared at him doubtfully.

“Finley. You know your father couldn’t kill anyone in cold blood.”

Did she know that?

She supposed that she did. He’d shown her steadfast love all her life. When angry, he kept his temper. He was one to talk things out bluntly. He was not one to resort to violence.

“Ed and I didn’t want to give Carla half the gold. But we didn’t want to kill her. We never would have wanted that. In fact, I couldn’t believe it as I watched her fall. Carla herself looked stunned, lying there on the carpet. The whole situation had escalated extremely fast. One minute, I was carrying gold up the stairs for her. Moments later, she was bleeding out.”

Finley tried to twist one of her rings around her finger and comprehended for at least the twentieth time since waking in the hospital that she didn’t have her rings. “How did you and Dad respond?”

“Ed administered CPR. I felt for her pulse. There was nothing we could do. She died very quickly.”

“And then?”

“Ed and I sat there. We were horrified. Shocked.”

“I know you called the police soon after she was shot. Why not tell them the truth?”

“If we’d done that, we’d have had to explain why Carla drew a gun on us. In which case, we’d have needed to come up with a plausible story that didn’t include the gold.”

“Or,” she said tiredly, “you could have told the officers the whole truth. About the gold. About all of it. I bet Dad was willing to do that. It was you. . . . It was you who wanted to keep it a secret.”

He inclined his head. “That’s fair. I did want to keep the gold a secret. But not just for myself. If we’d told the authorities about the gold, we’d have been charged with stealing it. Plus, it would have been hard to make anyone believe, once they knew about the treasure, that Ed had killed Carla accidentally in self-defense.”

“So you two invented the story about Dad killing her while cleaning the gun. Instead of a guilty person who’d stolen gold and rushed at Carla, you became an innocent eyewitness.”

He nodded apologetically.

Her father had a long, long history of protecting Robbie. Through the Brothers book, her dad had given her a glimpse into the bonds that tied him to his younger sibling. It was as if he was saying to her, This book shows a facet of who I am and what makes me tick. Can you understand?