“Did he say he intended to kill Dominic?”
She looked up at me. “No.”
“Did he mention a gun?”
“No.”
“Blood?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
A silence. Then, quietly, “He would interrupt it.”
I nodded.
“He said the farewell as planned was dishonest,” she said. “He said the truth deserved a stage.”
“And you believed him.”
“I did when he showed me that letter.”
Anger flashed in her eyes.
“He didn’t have to invent anything,” she said. “The letter is genuine. Dominic sabotaged my application. Market viability.” She spat the last two words between her teeth. “I had to learn from Henri Fontenot that the man I’d spent fifteen years trusting thought I had a ceiling and simply neglected to mention it to me.”
I leaned back.
“Yes,” I said. “The letter is genuine. What Dominic did was wrong. You deserved to hear it from him. Not from a man using it to justify violence.”
My words hit hard. She shifted in her seat.
“He said he was planning exposure,” Bridget said. “Not murder.”
“And you believed him more than Dominic.”
“I thought...” She stopped, then started again. “I thought something public made sense. It was the only way to adequately disrupt the collective memory. A scene. It would force everyone to look at what had been edited out.”
“And what information did you give him?”
Her jaw tightened. “Not everything.”
“That’s not the question.”
She took a deep breath. “I told him where Dominic stands in the last movement. That he steps half a pace toward first violin when the brass take the upper phrase. I mentioned that rehearsal blocks usually run late and which musicians would notice if someone crossed too near the podium and which wouldn’t.”
I looked at her for a long moment.
“You understood that your information was operational.”
“I understood it provided access.” After a moment, she added, “Henri listened. Do you understand that part? He listened to the harm Dominic caused me.”
“I understand why that would matter.”
“He never asked me to hate Dominic.”
“No, that would have been clumsy.”
