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I closed my eyes. She’d taken a handful of sleeping pills, climbed into a hot bath, and gone to sleep. It wasn’t impossible. She did take baths to unwind. She did take sleeping pills sometimes. Not together. Not that I knew of.

Raleigh was still talking. “But she doesn’t mention suicide and she doesn’t actually confess to killing Peyton. That’s what everyone has inferred, but she doesn’t actually say that. She says she’s responsible and feels guilty. She says she thought she didn’t have a choice, but I think that means keeping quiet about whatever it was she knew.”

Yes. Probably.

“She’s talking about not being able to survive something if shedoesn’tcome forward,” I said. I had a sick feeling I knew what that was.

“Exactly. I don’t think she planned on killing herself. But you knew her better than anyone. Would Astrid have killed Peyton if he was, I don’t know, blackmailing her maybe?”

“Hell, no. She’d have told him to jump in a lake and then fired him.”

“Would she kill herself to get out of something painful or embarrassing?”

“No.” That had always felt wrong. As wrong as the idea that she’d have killed Tom for ending their affair, although at the time that had been the only reason I could come up with. I felt obliged to add, “I don’t think so. But maybe I didn’t know my sister as well as I thought I did.”

Raleigh studied me gravely. “I think this letter was intended for you, Caz. I think this was her promise to you that she was going to come forward with what she knew about Peyton’s death. I think she was asking you to forgive her for waiting so long to tell the truth.”

I said slowly, “I don’t think she did know at first.”

Raleigh’s brows drew together. “Why do you say that?”

“Because she wouldn’t have left me there.”

I felt like I’d been trapped beneath a bombed-out building, but now the stones and rubble and timbers had been lifted off me. I felt like I could see again. Like I could breathe again.

She’d suspected something. But it had taken her some time to figure it out—whatever realization it was that had changed everything—but once she knew, she had resolved to come forward.

Raleigh was silent, skimming over the letter, though he probably had it memorized by now.

I stared at his profile, said a little mockingly, “Didn’t anyone believe you when you tried to tell them it wasn’t a confession?”

He glanced at me, glanced away. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

“You didn’t?”

“I haven’t shared this theory with anyone but you.”

After a moment, I asked, “Why?”

His throat moved as he swallowed. “Because it was the fastest way to get you out of jail. The charges had to be dropped. I c-couldn’t risk you maybe having to wait through months of a new investigation, maybe months of another trial, assuming the investigation even got us that far. What if we couldn’t get another trial? What if there wasn’t enough evidence to clear you?” He shook his head. “No. I threw in one thousand percent behind the confession theory.”

My breath huffed out in a little gulp.

He turned to me, said earnestly, “Caz, I know you can’t forgive me. I don’t blame you. I don’t know that I deserve forgiving. But I do love you. And I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you.”

I can’t say that I forgave him in that moment. But the knowledge that Astrid had not left me to be punished for something she did—combined with the knowledge that I had wronged her in believing she had killed Tom Peyton—those things did make a difference. Did assuage a lot of the pain and hurt and rage.

As did learning that Raleigh had tried to help me. He’d deliberately kept his mouth shut when he saw the truth about that so-called confession and, knowing Raleigh, that was no small compromise. A big part of why I was sitting in my cozy living room at that moment, and not in my former cell at Chippewa Falls County Jail, was Raleigh.

It was very late. It had been a long and difficult day.

I didn’t say anything. I leaned in and rested my face in the curve of his shoulder. I closed my eyes.

“Caz,” he whispered. His arm slid around me. He kissed my temple. He didn’t say anything, either.

For a few moments we sat there, just breathing quietly, so carefully, our bodies settling into familiar curves as though there had been no time apart. I could hear his heartbeat, hear the funny little occasional hitch in his breathing like he was trying not to cry.

I was too tired for tears. Too bruised and empty to feel much but relief. Relief that I had not really been abandoned. Relief that I had not been forgotten. Crossed-off and discarded like an old ‘Things to Do’ list.