Kinsley reached the entrance to the kitchen and stopped.
The scene registered in a single, horrible moment. Eden stood near the kitchen table, and the carefully constructed façade that had defined her through every previous conversation was completely destroyed. Mascara ran down her cheeks in dark tracks. Her hair had come loose from the low chignon she’d worn that morning, strands hanging around her face in a way that made her look ten years older than she had two hours ago. And in her right hand, trembling but raised with unmistakable intent, she held a weapon.
Not a kitchen knife. A pottery tool. Kinsley recognized it from her first visit to this house, one of the sharp implements Darlene used for scoring and trimming her clay work. The blade was maybe four inches long, narrow and wickedly pointed, the kind of tool that was designed to cut through wet ceramic easily and could do far worse to human skin.
Darlene had backed herself against the kitchen counter, her hands raised in front of her in a placating gesture. Her eyes were wide with terror, fixed on the blade in Eden’s shaking hand.
“Eden.” Kinsley put everything she had into making her voice cut through the room’s charged atmosphere. She took a step into the kitchen, weapon raised, both hands steady on the grip. “Put the tool down. Right now.”
Eden’s head whipped toward her, and for a moment, Kinsley recognized something feral in her eyes. It was the look of a wounded animal, cornered and deciding whether to attack the new threat or the original one. Then recognition flickered across her features. And then something that might have been relief, the desperate, contradictory relief of a person who had gone too far and was grateful someone had arrived to stop them from going further.
“She needs to tell you,” Eden said, and her voice broke on every word. “She needs to tell you what she did. What she’s been hiding all these years.”
Kinsley kept her weapon trained on Eden but shifted her attention between both women. She measured the distance, calculated the angles, and assessed which direction the violence was most likely to travel. Eden was the immediate threat, but Darlene held the information that could defuse the situation. The confession Eden wanted was also the thing most likely to bring her back from the edge.
“Eden, listen to me.” Kinsley took another measured step. She was maybe ten feet away now. Close enough to intervene if Eden lunged, far enough to give herself reaction time. “I understand you’re angry. I understand you want answers. But this is not the way to get them.”
“Then what is?” Eden’s voice was raw, desperate. “She’s been living here, right across the street. Watching us. Watching Richard with his real family while she raised her daughter in our shadow?—”
Eden’s voice broke completely.
“Frannie is Richard’s daughter. Did you know that, Detective? Did you figure that out yet?”
“I’m figuring it out now,” Kinsley said quietly. “But I need to hear it from Darlene. And so do you. So I’m asking you to put the tool down, and let her tell us the truth.”
“Why should I believe anything she says?”
“Because if you hurt her, you’ll never know for certain.” Kinsley’s arms were beginning to ache from holding her weapon ready, the muscles in her shoulders and forearms burning with the sustained effort, but she didn’t waver. “You’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if you got it right. And if she did kill Iris, she needs to pay for that. But legally. Through the system. Not like this.”
Somewhere in the back of Kinsley’s mind, a voice whisperedhypocrite.
She was standing in another woman’s kitchen, urging the legal system as the path to justice, while twenty-one months ago, she’d stood on a dark road and chosen a different path entirely. She couldn’t very well confide in Eden that she was living with the alternative, that she knew exactly what it was like to decide the system wasn’t enough and to take matters into her own hands. All she could do was stand here and hope that the words she no longer fully believed in were enough to pull Eden back from an edge that Kinsley herself had already gone over.
Eden’s hand wavered.
The pottery tool dipped slightly, then rose again. Something in her expression shifted, the wild rage giving way to exhaustion.
“Tell her,” Eden demanded, turning her attention back to Darlene. The blade still pointed at her, but Eden’s arm was trembling more visibly now, the muscles giving out beneath the emotion. “Tell her what you did. Tell her why you moved here. Tell her about Frannie.”
Darlene’s face was streaked with tears, her entire body trembling against the counter. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet that Kinsley had to strain to hear it over the sound of her own pulse.
“You’re right, Eden.” Darlene’s eyes were closed, and she spoke with the hollow resignation of someone who had been carrying a weight for too long. “Richard and I had an affair. But it ended the day I discovered I was pregnant. I thought he loved me. I thought?—”
She pressed her lips together.
“I thought I was different from the others.”
“But he chose me,” Eden said bitterly, and the pottery tool lowered another inch. “I suppose I should feel honored.”
“I couldn’t just walk away.” Darlene’s voice was barely a whisper. “I couldn’t do that to my daughter. She deserved to know her father, even if it was only as a neighbor. Even if he could never acknowledge her. And I know it sounds foolish now, but I loved him.”
Darlene laughed bitterly, leaning back against the counter as if it were the only thing keeping her upright. She wasn’t even focused on the weapon in Eden’s hand anymore. She was somewhere else entirely, somewhere in the past, reliving decisions that had determined the shape of every day since.
“Richard offered me money.” Darlene’s voice had gone flat, emotionless, as though she were reading from a document rather than describing her own life. “He said he’d provide financial support. But only if I agreed to his terms. I could never tell anyone he was Frannie’s father. I could never ask for more than what he decided to give. And I could never tell Frannie the truth. She could never know who her biological father was.”
“Richard bought you this house, didn’t he?” Kinsley asked, inching closer while both women were focused on each other.
Darlene understood what was happening. Every word she spoke was a second that Eden’s attention remained fixed on the story rather than the blade.
