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“The man on the left is Chief Foley, and the man on the right is Detective Whitlock,” I said.

“Friends of yours, I imagine?”

“They are.”

Whitlock approached the beaded doorway and stood there a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Then he leaned to the side, tapping his knuckle to the window as he announced himself.

“You can both come in,” Gabe said.

They entered the home, and Whitlock smiled at me, saying, “Fancy meeting you here, Georgiana. Great minds think alike.”

“That they do.”

Foley tipped his head toward me and said, “Have you been here long?”

“A little while. I figured you both would’ve beat me to it.” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “I should get going, leave you both to question him yourselves.”

“You might want to stay.”

Whitlock nodded in agreement, and I realized I was about to be let in on something I didn’t yet know.

“We’ve just done another sweep of Dominic and Noelle’s home, and we found something we’d like to talk to you about, Gabe,” Whitlock said.

“All right,” Gabe said.

Whitlock reached into his pocket, producing what appeared to be a letter.

“We didn’t see it the first time we went through the house because it was stuck to the underside of the lamp on Noelle’s nightstand.”

“We’re thinking she may have put it there intentionally,” Foley said, “to perhaps hide it from her husband.”

“If she was hiding it, why wouldn’t she just throw it away?” I asked.

“Given Noelle and Dominic are both dead, I guess we’ll never know.”

“Who’s Dominic?” Gabe asked.

“Noelle’s husband,” I said.

“He’s dead, too?” Gabe said. “Strangled?”

“Not strangled,” I said. “After Noelle died, he killed himself.”

Gabe slapped a hand to his lips, his head shaking. “Oh, this is awful. So, so, so awful.”

“What we want to know is ... when did you write her this letter, and why?” Foley asked.

“Sure, I’ll tell you,” Gabe said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “May I see the letter so I can get up to speed on what’s happening here?”

Whitlock looked at Foley, who nodded, and passed the letter to me.

I opened it and began to read.

Dear Noelle,

I can’t thank you enough for your letter and for reaching out to me after all this time, and I want you to know how much your kind words mean to me. I’ve thought a lot about you over the years, wondering how you are and what your life might be like, as I hoped for every happiness for you and your family.

If it wasn’t for my concern about stirring up the past, I would have made contact as soon as I was released. There are so many things I’ve wanted to say to you.

First, no amount of apologies I could ever give could make up for that awful night. I pushed you to do something, even after you asked me to stop, and for that, I will never forgive myself. The best thing I could do was to learn from my mistakes, and learn I have.

While I was serving my time, I found great comfort in the scriptures. Up to that point, I’d never considered myself a spiritual person. I was more of an atheist, if anything. But something about the many passages I read spoke to me, and I found the more I relied on the words, the more I began to feel real change.

Some people don’t believe others can change, and that’s all right. But I want you to know that I have changed, and I promise you, I am a better man, a humble man. And I will never harm anyone again.

I hope that you are living your best life, your fullest life, and that you’ve been able to shed the past, becoming the brilliant woman I’ve always known you to be.

Gabe Romero

P.S. I’d like to close with a scripture, one that holds great meaning to me:

Be sorry for your sins and cry because of them. Be sad and do not laugh. Let your joy be turned to sorrow.Let yourself be brought low before the Lord. Then He will lift you up and help you. – James 4:9-10

I handed the letter back to Whitlock and turned toward Gabe. “You made no mention of this letter to me. Why not?”

“I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, or any of you. When you told me she was murdered, I thought it might be best if I kept it to myself.”

“Because if you told me, you figured it would make you look like a prime suspect in her murder.”

“It’s one of things that crossed my mind, yes. If I didn’t murder her, and I did not, I didn’t see any relevance in discussing the letter.”

“By not discussing it, you’ve made yourself look even guiltier,” Foley said. “Didn’t think of that—now, did you?”

“I understand how it looks, but I swear to you, whatever happened to Noelle had nothing to do with me.”

Foley and Whitlock exchanged glances, like they were questioning everything.

So was I.

“Let’s back up a minute,” I said. “In your letter you thanked Noelle for reaching out, and you mentioned a letter she wrote to you. Do you have it?”

“That was my next question,” Foley said.

Gabe nodded. “Of course I have it.”

He walked to a bedroom, and I heard him shuffling around. Then he returned, holding the letter out as he said, “Who should I give this to first?”

Foley held out a hand.

He opened the letter, looked it over, and then handed the letter and the envelope to Whitlock. Whitlock did the same and then handed it to me, making me wonder why they hadn’t just read it aloud instead of playing a game of “pass the letter.”

The letter said:

Gabe,

After all this time, I never thought I’d find myself sitting at my desk, writing you a letter. When you were first released from prison, I’ll admit I had a fair amount of trepidation, even though I didn’t believe any further harm would come to me. I can’t explain it, but it was there, a worrisome feeling that sent me back to the night you forced yourself upon me.

To get past my feelings, I decided to seek out a therapist, and it was in those sessions that I felt a greater sense of healing and a better understanding of the person you were back then. Even though you did what you did, there was another side of you, a side I saw that most didn’t ... a goodness if only you could conquer the demons of your upbringing and seek after a better life.

Your father raped your mother, and you, in turn, raped me. As you sat in the car with me that night, sobbing and telling me the horrors you’d endured at the hand of your father, I felt for you, even though I thought I shouldn’t have.

I want to explain why I did what I did, confessing the rape to the police, which led to your arrest and incarceration. The one thing you needed more than anything was to get away from your father and putting you behind bars was a way to accomplish just that.

I hoped in the years you served that you could become your own man, a man who could step out of his father’s shadow and become the man you wanted to be.

I want you to know that I forgive you, and I hope you’ve forgiven yourself. And I hope you are seeking a better life than the one you lived before.

Noelle

I placed the letter back into the envelope, flipping it over to see the date it was postmarked.

“She sent you this letter a month before she was murdered,” I said.

“I know,” Gabe said, “which is why not telling you about it seemed like a good idea. Look, it’s easy to convict the felon, a lot easier than pinning her murder on someone else. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to convince you, be it a polygraph or whatever else.”

“Noelle lived a private life over the past several years,” I said. “So, what I’m wondering is, how did you find her address? It’s not listed on the outside of this letter.”

“You’re right. I tried everything I could think of to find an address for her once I’d written my response. I couldn’t find anything, and I didn’t know her surname. I assumed her parents still lived in the same house, but I didn’t dare send it there.”

“Why not?” Foley asked.

“I was sure they wouldn’t give it to her, and also, I thought they might read it. If they did, they would have known she’d sent a letter to me, and I thought that was information she might not want them to have.”

“You still haven’t answered the question. You got the letter to her somehow.”

“When her friend Zoey visited me, she said a few things about herself during the visit, which made her easier to find. I do not choose to engage in any kind of social media online, but one of the men in my church group does, and his father was in law enforcement. It took all of ten minutes to find Zoey online, and then once we figured out her last name, the rest was easy.”

“So you wrote to Zoey, and what, asked her to give Noelle your letter?” I asked.

“I did, and I never knew if she had done it—not until now.”

“When did you send the letter to Noelle?” Foley asked.

“A week after I received her letter.”

“A couple weeks before she was murdered.”

Gabe nodded.

Foley raised a hand. “I’ve heard enough for now. Gabe, I’d like you to come down to the department, and we’ll continue this conversation there.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet.”

Gabe grabbed a hoodie off the arm of the couch.

The four of us headed for the door, and Foley turned toward me.

“I’d like for us to speak to him alone,” he said.

“Meaning, you don’t want me in the room when you question him.”

“Correct. But we should catch up soon and compare notes.”

I shot him a wink and said, “Oh, don’t worry. We will.”