Kinsley exchanged a glance with Toby, who hung back slightly, letting her take the lead. Something had definitely happened between yesterday and today. The woman who had sat across from Kinsley at her kitchen table, carefully controlling every word and gesture, had been replaced by someone who looked like she hadn’t slept and no longer cared who noticed.
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t.” Eden removed her sunglasses, and her eyes were red-rimmed, the skin beneath them shadowed with a darkness that came from hours of crying or hours of staring at a ceiling in the dark, or both. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
“You said you had things to tell me.”
“I do.” Eden turned slowly to face the homes across the street again, and the movement had the quality of a woman returning to something she’d been studying before they arrived. “This neighborhood used to be so close-knit. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Block parties every season, impromptu barbecues, children running between yards like the property lines didn’t exist.”
“That sounds nice,” Kinsley offered, unsure where Eden was heading but unwilling to steer her.
“It was suffocating.” The word was sharp, cutting through the nostalgic veneer without warning. “Everyone in everyone else’s business. No privacy. No secrets that stayed buried for long. At least, that’s what we all believed.”
Kinsley followed Eden’s line of sight to the houses across the street. The Kusman residence sat directly opposite, its bay window staring back at them.
“Eden, what are you trying to tell me?”
Eden was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible, almost speculative, as though she were testing the words before committing to them.
“I threw away the recorders I found in our house. I told you that yesterday. But standing here now, looking at this neighborhood, I keep wondering—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together. Then, with the air of someone stepping off a ledge, asked a single question. “Did you ever find any recorders outside our property?”
Kinsley’s pulse quickened.
“We didn’t have a reason to expand our search, other than the high school. Should we have?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Eden shook her head slowly. “Iris was so meticulous about her recordings. So strategic. She planned everything, thought three steps ahead of everyone around her. It just seems odd, doesn’t it, that she’d limit herself to our house when there was so much more to document? So many conversations happening behind closed doors all around her?”
Kinsley had been bothered by some of the footage, as well. Iris would have had to place a recorder in the Kusman’s home to gather evidence of Ginny’s affair. The same went for whatever Todd had paid to have disappear.
“If you know something, Mrs. Bell, now is the time to share it.”
“I don’t know anything.” Eden finally met Kinsley’s gaze, and what Kinsley observed there wasn’t evasion. “That’s the problem, Detective. I’ve spent thirty years not knowing. Not wanting to know. And now?—”
Her voice broke slightly.
“Now I think maybe I should have looked. Should have listened to those tapes instead of throwing them away. Should have asked the questions I was too afraid to ask.”
“What do you think you would have heard?”
“The truth.” Eden’s laugh was hollow, emptied of everything except exhaustion. “Whatever that is.”
Before Kinsley could press further, Eden turned abruptly and walked toward the mansion, her heels clicking against the flagstone path.
“I’d like to go inside. Just for a moment.”
Kinsley nodded to Toby, who followed Eden toward the house. She lingered on the sidewalk, observing their disappearance through the front entrance, and turned herattention back to the Kusman house. They, too, had brick pillars, but the layout was simpler. No wall accompanied them.
What had Eden been thinking? What had she almost said?
Something had happened last night. Richard had revealed something to Eden, or she had confronted Richard with something, and whatever passed between them had sent her here this morning with red eyes and a question about recorders outside the property. She was pointing Kinsley somewhere without being willing to say it outright, offering a direction without providing a destination.
Kinsley eventually joined Toby and Eden inside the mansion.
The house was empty, stripped of furniture and personal effects, reduced to the bones of what it had once been. Eden walked through the rooms in silence for nearly ten minutes, trailing her fingertips along walls, pausing in doorways, standing in the center of spaces that must have been crowded with memories.
When Eden finally emerged, her eyes were wet but her composure intact. She thanked Kinsley for indulging her, promised to call if she remembered anything else, and walked back to her Mercedes without another word. Kinsley eventually pulled away from the curb without the answers she’d been hoping for.
It wasn’t as though they could obtain a warrant to search every home in the neighborhood based on a grieving mother’s cryptic suggestions. Kinsley drove in silence while Toby loosened his tie. She stopped at two stop signs and wove through the quiet streets until she reached the neighborhood’s front entrance, where she pressed the brakes and came to a complete stop.
