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A chorus of agreement followed. At least I knew everyone was listening.

“The last argument we had…” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again. “The last argument we had was about Tyler.”

“Why don’t you tell us about that argument?” Dr. Collins suggested gently.

“There’s not much to tell. She didn’t like him. She thought I could do better.” I laughed humorlessly. “And that was before he cheated on me. Turns out she was right. If only she were here to say I told you so.”

I finished the water, and Laura took the empty cup from my hand. She got up and refilled it before handing it back, my fingers trembling slightly as I took it.

“The night we argued was the night before she went missing. I never got the chance to tell her I was sorry.”

“I’m sure she knew,” Dr. Collins said. “Like you said, people argue all the time. It doesn’t mean either person takes the disagreement to heart. It was natural for her to be concerned about an important relationship in your life, regardless of whether her fears had any solid foundation. And it was just as natural for you, as an adult, to see her concern as interference and push back. The same pattern plays out in families all over the world.”

“They found her car,” I said, my heart beginning to pound at the realization I was really going to tell them everything. “A couple of days after she disappeared. It was parked in the Ham Street Riverside Car Park in Richmond. It’s basically a gravel parking area where you have direct access to the towpath.”

I gripped the polystyrene cup tighter. “She liked Richmond. She used to take me to see the deer in Richmond Park all the time. I didn’t appreciate it much back then. I’d rather have been riding my bike with my friends. But looking back now…”

I stopped before I lost myself completely in the memory. “The car was unlocked, which wasn’t like her, and her handbag was still inside. Who goes for a walk without taking their phone or purse? And even if you leave them behind, you lock the car, right?”

No one answered. They could probably sense that I was circling the part of the story I’d spent months trying not to face.

“They tried to say she’d walked into the river of her own accord.”

“They?” Logan asked gently.

“The police. I told them repeatedly that I would have known if my mother was suicidal. She wasn’t depressed. Nothing awful had happened that might have pushed her over the edge. I kept telling them that if she was in the river, someone else had put her there.”

My voice grew more forceful, memories of the days following her disappearance crawling beneath my skin like something desperate to tear free. “Do you think they listened?”

The question emerged more bitterly than I intended. “Of course, part of me hoped I was wrong. I would have given anything for her to have boarded a plane to Honolulu without telling anyone. Except she’d have taken her handbag.”

I picked at a loose piece of skin beside my fingernail, not caring whether I made it bleed. “There should have been CCTV, but the camera wasn’t working. You’d think someone would have noticed and gotten it fixed, but no…”

The room had become so quiet that I finally risked looking up. Every face was turned toward me, their expressions sympathetic.

“I guess you want the end of the story.”

“Only if you’re comfortable telling it,” Logan said quietly. “Remember this is for you, not us.”

I forced out a breath. “I walked that stretch of river at least twenty times in the days after she disappeared. I don’t know why I thought I might find something everyone else had missed. Perhaps I expected some kind of sixth sense, that our bond would make me stop at a particular place and know, She’s here. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.”

I lifted the cup to my mouth. The slight tremor in my hand had become a shake.

“She went missing on Monday, and they didn’t find her until Sunday. It rained heavily on Saturday night. The theory was that…”

I tried to say her body, but the words wouldn’t come. “…that she’d been trapped beneath debris, and the change in the river’s level had shaken her free. She’d been in the water too long for a normal viewing. My father identified her from a scar on her forearm.” My throat tightened. “That was one good thing he did. If he hadn’t stepped in, I would have had to identify her myself.”

I stared into the water in my cup. “The postmortem showed she died of a head injury. She was already dead when they threw her into the river as if she was nothing.”

I closed my eyes against the pain. “I’ve never been less happy about being proved right.”

Now that I’d reached the worst of it, I became desperate to finish. “No weapon was found. There were no suspects. No CCTV. It was enough of a mystery that I couldn’t even turn on the TV without being bombarded by reports about her death. Whoever the bastard was, he took her wedding ring.”

I swallowed. “And yes, she still wore it after the divorce. Not for sentimental reasons, but because she liked it and found it useful whenever men tried to talk to her and she wanted them to leave her alone.”

I shifted in my seat. “That bothers me. That some weirdo might still have her ring.”

“They never arrested anyone?” Laura asked softly.