PART 11
Colin’s mouth fell open.
“What?”
“Now,” Grace said.
“You’re arresting me because two senile old people lied?”
Walter’s face crumpled.
Not with weakness.
With grief.
“We loved you,” he said. “You were eight years old when we brought you home after Emily died.”
Colin looked away.
Walter’s voice broke.
“June cut the crust off your sandwiches because you said your mom used to. I sold my hunting rifle to pay your college deposit.”
For one moment, something human passed across Colin’s face.
Then greed buried it.
“You were wasting it,” he hissed. “That land was just sitting there. That house is too big for you. You don’t even understand what it’s worth.”
June stepped forward.
Her wrist bruise was visible now.
“We understood what it cost,” she said.
Those words landed in the wet morning air.
The land had cost Walter’s knees.
June’s hands.
Emily’s childhood chores.
Decades of winters, funerals, harvests, and hope.
Colin had only seen dollar signs.
Grace nodded to her deputy.
As they cuffed Colin, he turned his head toward me.
“You think you saved them?”
I stepped closer.
“No,” I said. “Emily did.”
May you like
He stared at me, confused.
“She saved me so I could be here when they needed a door open.”
