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“What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you guessed it already, going about my things? The will—he knew he was dying. All this time, he knew.”
The will.Bron focused on that. On the importance of that.
“The will?” Bron said, and when he didn’t get any explanation. “Darcy?”
“He—he had me written out of it—his own son. For so long I resented him leaving everything to Ada, trusting Toni with it, but all these months he’s been trying to fix what had been broken between us.”
Bron couldn’t understand any of it. He repeated what he knew. “Your father, he left everything to Ada—to Toni?”
“Yes, yes,” Darcy sobbed. “I treated my father t-terribly, and Ada too. I can’t be a father. I’m a monster.”
Bron took a step back, his legs trembling. Darcy looked up, his gaze fixed on him, and wiped his eyes, his nose, on his sleeve.
“Why do you shrink away from me like that?” He settled his breathing, rose tall again when he stood. “Please, I know I have made mistakes.”
Darcy written out of the will. Ada finding something in the photo album she shouldn’t have. The fire. The locket. All these things swirled around in his head.
“Why are you silent, Bron? Talk to me.”
The air was whipped from his lungs. Accusations lay on the tip of his tongue. But nothing made any sense. Did the pieces fit together? Photo album. Fire. Locket. Death.
“I—I cannot,” he said.
The seconds ticked by, suspended in air, a moment that would never end. But this was what it had come to, so where was the answer? Mr. Edwards had kept the will in the photo album. The photo album that lived in the library. Darcy had already known he’d lost everything. So what did it matter to him? Had Darcy started the fire? But why—what had he to gain? To get rid of the evidence of the will? But here it was now. And the locket with Ada’s name …
What did it all mean?
“You aren’t going to leave me too, Bron, are you?”
Bron took a step back. “I must go—”
“You are going?” A whimper emanated from Darcy’s throat. “I will tell you everything. Everything—I swear it. No more secrets. If you’ll just stay.” He took his arm and held it taut. “I couldn’t tell you the truth about Ada, I just couldn’t. And then the fire …”
Bron swallowed the lump that was hard in his throat. “What about the fire?”
Darcy took a moment to scrutinize his face, then released his tight hold on him to knock him twice on the head. “What’s going on in that head of yours? Nothing good, I’m sure of it.”
“You’re scaring me,” Bron said.
“That is why you recoil? What is it you think I’ve done?”
“The fire,” Bron repeated.
“In the library?” He jabbed his fingers at Bron’s chest, a curl of his lips.
Was Darcy here admitting it to him, that he had done it?
“Ada saw you leave the room. She saw how angry you were and told me what she’d seen. Pictures of Toni.” Darcy’s eyes flicked to the bookshelf behind him. “Ada thinks it was she who set the room on fire, thinks she left a candle burning as she ran out. But …”
“But?” Darcy’s face changed as understanding hit him. “Oh, but you thinkIdid it? Have you solved it, Sherlock?”
And then something unlocked in Bron’s mind. Something which seemed to slot everything into place.
“It wasyou. Ada—your locket—”
“My locket?” he said, more seriously, without derision.
