Chapter 13 - Why He Chose Me
I listened to Brenda's message once, then transferred it to my evidence archive.
For years I had believed Gavin fell in love with me because I was thoughtful and he was charming.
Our first date had been in a little bookstore near the courthouse.
He said we met by accident.
Now I wondered who had told him I liked that bookstore.
Naomi reminded me that one ugly statement did not rewrite every memory.
She was right.
But neither could a sweet memory excuse what he had done since.
Mara arranged for me to meet Detective Ruiz again.
I brought the voicemail and our wedding photographs.
Ruiz did not speculate about romance.
She asked specific questions about dates, introductions, and property disclosures.
I remembered that Gavin had asked about my house before he asked what I did for work.
At the time, I thought he was interested in the neighborhood.
He also knew my aunt's name when I had mentioned only that the house was inherited.
Those details were not proof, but they became part of the timeline.
Then Ruth uncovered a photograph from a neighborhood fundraiser twenty years earlier.
Brenda stood beside Philip Voss.
Behind them, partly hidden by a folding table, was a teenage boy with Gavin's unmistakable dark eyes.
I stared at the boy until I felt foolish.
Of course Gavin had been young once.
What shattered me was knowing he had visited the street years before he pretended not to know it.
I finally agreed to a carefully arranged recorded conversation through counsel rather than a private meeting.
Gavin's attorney declined.
Instead Gavin sent a letter, handwritten on stationery from our wedding.
He said his mother had been trying to recover what my aunt stole.
He said he had loved me despite our families' dispute.
He said I should understand his impossible position.
There was no apology for my bruises.
No acknowledgment of the forged authorization.
No concern for the employees.
Only a request to abandon the investigations and come home.
At the bottom he wrote a sentence I had heard before.
You know how Mom gets when she's upset.
I turned the letter over.
A tiny square of paper had been taped behind it.
It was a photograph of the metal box, sitting open.
May you like
Inside lay a ledger bound in blue cloth.
