"And that night," Claudia continued, “we were both home like I said, but I fell asleep on the couch and I can’t say for certain whether or not George left while I was sleeping.”
She trailed off and looked at me with those wet, red-rimmed eyes, and the picture she was painting was so complete, so damning, that a better detective than me might have driven straight to Tony's desk and laid it all out. George Ferraro, in the kitchen, with the methanol.
"Why are you tellingmethis?" I asked.
"Because you know this family. You know I'm not making it up." Her hand found my wrist and squeezed. Her fingers were freezing. "And because if something happens to me, I need someone to know what I know. Someone outside the family. Someone who can go to that detective and say?—"
She wanted me to be her messenger.
“Are you saying that you think George killed his mother?” I asked. “Why? What would his motive be?” George did have access to the solvents with his model airplane hobby, but did he know what to do with them to make them effective in Rosaria’s tea without her tasting it?
Claudia gave a bitter laugh. “Motive? Well most likely it was something Rosaria was holding over his head. She had plenty of information on everyone. How Sal paid people off to getthrough school, George’s indiscretions, what really happened with Paula’s first art mentor. She used it all to keep us in line.”
The diary, of course. Rosaria had something on everyone.
Wait... how did Claudia know that?
Paula had never told anyone about the art mentor. Heck, she hadn’t even elaborated it to me. But she had said it was in the diary. Claudia could only have found out about that from one place.
Claudia was the one had taken the diary.
My hand was still near Claudia's arm. I didn't move it. Didn't tense. Didn't let my breathing change. But something cold settled behind my ribs, and the woman sitting next to me—the frightened wife, the lonely hostess, the woman I'd recognized myself in—shifted in my vision like a picture coming into focus, and what I saw underneath made my stomach turn.
From the dark window behind Claudia, Rosaria materialized. No shimmer, no gradual appearance. Justthere, her reflection overlaid on the November night, her expression stripped of everything except something I'd never seen from her before.
Fear.
"Gina." Rosaria's voice was tight, urgent. "The hotel keycard. At the benefit. It fell fromherclutch."
I kept my eyes on Claudia.
"It was not George having an affair," Rosaria said. "It was Claudia. The keycard was hers. I remember now. It’s in my diary.”
Rosaria flickered. Hard. The edges of her form shredded like paper in wind. She destabilized. The window went dark.
Claudia was watching me. Waiting for me to respond, to commiserate, to pick up the thread of poor-George and take it home to Tony like a good little messenger. Her eyes were patient. Kind. Concerned.
And completely, absolutely empty.
I'd been sitting here for twenty minutes recognizing myself in this woman. The loneliness, the shrinking, the quiet desperation of a life lived in someone else's shadow. Every word she'd said about George was true—hewaswithdrawn, hewassecretive, hedidlock his door and build model airplanes and flinch when people knocked. All true.
She'd used every true thing about her husband to build a lie so seamless I'd walked right into it and sat down on the floor.
The cold behind my ribs spread.
"You took the diary," I said.
Claudia stopped talking. Mid-breath. Like someone had pressed pause on a recording.
"There's only one way you'd know about Paula's art mentor.” My voice was steady, which was remarkable, because my pulse was hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth. "Paula never told anyone. She only told Rosaria. And Rosaria only wrote it down in one place."
Claudia's tears had stopped. Not dried.Stopped—like a switch being flipped. The red around her eyes was still there, but the eyes themselves had changed. Something behind them had rearranged itself, and the woman looking back at me wasn't the scared wife or the gracious hostess or the grieving daughter-in-law.
She was someone I'd never met. Wearing Claudia's face.
"How doyouknow about it, Claudia?" I said. "Unlessyouread the diary."
“Paula.”
