His voice was even.
Reasonable.
The voice of a man with nothing to hide.
“It’s been reopened,” Reyes said.
Daniel looked at me.
Not at Ava.
At me.
And in that look was everything — the calculation, the search, the rapid assessment of how much I knew and how I’d gotten there.
“Ellen,” he said.
“What is this?”
“I think you should answer the detective’s questions,” I said.
Something shifted in his expression.
The reasonableness thinned.
“I want to call my lawyer,” he said.
“You’re welcome to do that,” Reyes said.
“We can speak at the station.”
Daniel didn’t move immediately.
He looked at Ava, who was standing very still beside the kitchen counter, her cereal untouched.
“You did this,” he said to her.
His voice had dropped to something quieter and more dangerous.
“After everything we gave you.
After everything this family—”
“Mr.
Calloway.” Reyes stepped forward.
“Let’s go.”
Daniel looked back at me one more time.
I held his gaze and didn’t look away.
He picked up his phone from the counter and walked toward the door.
At the threshold, he stopped.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he said.
Not to Ava.
To me.
“I think I do,” I said.
Officer Chen placed a hand on his arm and guided him forward.
The door closed.
Ava let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for five years.
She sat down on the kitchen floor, right where she’d been sitting the day before when she’d first told me the truth, and she covered her face with both hands and cried without making a sound.
I sat down beside her on the floor.
We stayed there for a long time.
