He said no one would believe a girl like me over a man like him.” She finally looked up.
“And he was right.
I was sixteen.
I had two priors for shoplifting.
He was a respected man with a clean record and a grieving wife.” Her voice broke.
“I was so scared.
I just said what he told me to say.”
I stood up from the table.
I didn’t know I was going to.
My body just moved.
I walked to the sink and stood there with my hands gripping the edge of the counter, staring at the backyard.
The pie was still on the rack.
Chloe’s favorite.
Blueberry.
I made it every year to feel close to her.
All five of those years, Daniel had sat across from me at this table.
He had held my hand at the cemetery.
He had cried at her name.
“There’s something else,” Ava said behind me.
I turned around.
She reached into the inside lining of the jacket — a hidden pocket I hadn’t known existed — and pulled out a small photograph.
She set it on the table face-up.
It was Daniel.
Taken from the passenger seat.
His hands on the wheel, his face turned sideways, caught mid-shout.
And in the corner of the frame, barely visible — Chloe’s hand reaching toward him.
“Chloe took it,” Ava said.
“Right before it happened.
Her phone was thrown from the car.
I found it in the grass two days later when I went back.
I printed the photo and hid it in the jacket lining because I didn’t know what else to do with it.”
I picked up the photograph.
Daniel’s face.
My husband’s face.
Screaming at our daughter in the last seconds before the crash.
“Ava,” I said slowly.
“Does anyone else know about this?”
She shook her head.
“Then we need to be very careful,” I said.
“Because if he came back for his phone and saw your face — he already suspects something.”
Ava’s eyes went to the window.
Outside, a car had slowed at the end of our street.
