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“You crushed up those pills and you put them in her food and you—you?—”
Papa takes a step toward me. I stumble backward.
“Don’t touch me!” I scream. “Don’t you ever touch me!”
Papa’s jaw sets. His eyes go flat and cold—the same stone and ice I’ve known my whole life.
“You don’t understand,” he says. “Someday, you will.”
“I understand plenty.” I’m shaking so hard my teeth chatter. “I understand that Mama is gone and you’re the one who made her go.”
He doesn’t deny it. That’s the worst part. He just stands there, bloody and broken, and he doesn’t deny a single word.
I straighten my spine the way he taught me. I wipe my face with the back of my hand. And I look my father dead in the eyes.
“I’ll never forget what I saw tonight,” I tell him. My voice doesn’t sound so squeaky and scared anymore. “I’ll never forgive you. And one day, I’m going to make you pay for what you did to her, even if it takes the rest of my life.”
Papa looks so badly like there’s something he wants to say.
But he doesn’t.
He just turns and walks away, leaving muddy footprints on the hardwood floor.
77
RAE
NYPD 114th PCT
Evidence Transcription | Case #2025-ME-11842
Item:Journal, p. 38 of 40
Evidentiary Tag:#2025-ME-11842-DOC-038
Transcript:“He finally said yes. I’ve never loved him more.”
I look up at Jillian as tears sluice down my face. This might be the most tragic love story I’ve ever read in my life. I’m crumblingas I finish reading, reduced to absolute kibble.
Elena wasn’tmurdered; she was… she wasloved into the next life.She chose her own ending and she did it with so much dignity that it takes my breath away.
My heart breaks for everyone involved. For Elena, who made an impossible choice. For Lukas, who gave the flesh off his back to save her. For Kir, who couldn’t possibly understand.
Even for myself, because now, I understandeverything.
And I have no idea what to do with it.
I think of what Lukas said in that holding cell in that flat, deadened voice:She was a distraction. Nothing more.
It’s so obvious what he was doing now. He was protecting Elena’s final request, yes, but he was also protectingme.He let his son believe the worst so he could keep me safe.
God, the idiot. The noble, self-destructive, infuriatingidiot.
He’s still doing what these pages make clear he’s alwaysdone: carrying everyone’s weight for them—his dead wife’s secrets, his son’s hatred, my future. All of it balanced on those scarred shoulders.
I jump to my feet, one thought on my mind. “I have to tell Kir.”
Kir has spent eighteen years believing his father murdered his mother in cold blood. He’s built his entire identity around that hatred, and one glance at him in that interrogation room was all I needed to see to know that it has ruined him. It’s not too late, not yet—but God only knows when “too late” will arrive.
