“Melanie delivered the pills, but I do not believe she understood what they were.”
I closed my eyes.
On the tape, my grandfather coughed.
“Sadie must be protected. She is the only one who refused their money. The only one who still asks questions.”
Tears burned my right eye.
I remembered him teaching me to ride a bicycle.
Showing me how to plant tomatoes.
Telling me that honesty was expensive but always worth the price.
Then another voice entered the recording.
A woman’s voice.
My mother’s.
“You should have changed the will when Arthur asked.”
Grandpa answered, “You will never touch what belongs to Sadie.”
My mother laughed softly.
It was the same laugh I had heard while bleeding on the lawn.
Then the tape ended.
No one spoke.
Not Wyatt.
Not the detective.
Not the prosecutor.
The silence carried its own verdict.
My parents had spent twelve years thinking the evidence was gone.
