Chapter 16 #2
Rosaria flickered. Hard. The edges of her form shredded like paper in wind. She destabilized. The window went dark.
Claudia was watching me. Waiting for me to respond, to commiserate, to pick up the thread of poor-George and take it home to Tony like a good little messenger. Her eyes were patient. Kind. Concerned.
And completely, absolutely empty.
I'd been sitting here for twenty minutes recognizing myself in this woman.
The loneliness, the shrinking, the quiet desperation of a life lived in someone else's shadow.
Every word she'd said about George was true—he was withdrawn, he was secretive, he did lock his door and build model airplanes and flinch when people knocked. All true.
She'd used every true thing about her husband to build a lie so seamless I'd walked right into it and sat down on the floor.
The cold behind my ribs spread.
"You took the diary," I said.
Claudia stopped talking. Mid-breath. Like someone had pressed pause on a recording.
"There's only one way you'd know about Paula's art mentor.” My voice was steady, which was remarkable, because my pulse was hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth. "Paula never told anyone. She only told Rosaria. And Rosaria only wrote it down in one place."
Claudia's tears had stopped. Not dried. Stopped—like a switch being flipped.
The red around her eyes was still there, but the eyes themselves had changed.
Something behind them had rearranged itself, and the woman looking back at me wasn't the scared wife or the gracious hostess or the grieving daughter-in-law.
She was someone I'd never met. Wearing Claudia's face.
"How do you know about it, Claudia?" I said. "Unless you read the diary."
“Paula.”
It made sense now. George had solvents with the methanol, but Claudia was studying veterinary science, she must have learned how to mix them to poison someone.
Claudia had access to the teacup and she’d cleaned up the next day.
She had access to Rosaria’s bedroom after she died.
Claudia was the one having the affair and Rosaria found out.
If only Rosaria had clued me in, I might not be in this position right now.
"You were supposed to go home," Claudia said.
Her voice was different—lower, flatter, stripped of every note of warmth she'd been performing for the last twenty minutes.
For the last fourteen months. For the last twenty years.
"You were supposed to take what I told you about George and hand it to your detective like a good girl. That was all you had to do."
"You've been setting George up. This whole time. The scared wife routine, the stories about his behavior, the keycard at the benefit—you wanted me to build a case against your own husband."
"George makes an excellent suspect." She said it the way she'd said I keep finding things in his pockets—flat, practical, a woman discussing logistics. "The nervous wreck with the locked den and the chemicals and a lifetime of resentment toward his mother. A jury would've convicted him in a week."
"And me? I was just supposed to be the delivery system?"
"You were perfect for it." Something crossed her face—not anger, not contempt.
Appreciation. The clinical kind. "The wronged ex-wife investigating her mother-in-law's murder, feeding tips to the handsome detective.
Everything you told him would've led straight to George.
And I'd be right there, the loyal wife, devastated to discover what her husband had done.
" She tilted her head. "I would've been magnificent at the trial. You know I would."
That was the terrifying part. She would have been magnificent. She'd have worn black and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and every person in that courtroom would have felt sorry for her.
"But you had to be clever." Claudia's voice hardened. "You had to catch the one thing—" She stopped herself. Reset. When she spoke again, she was calm. Eerily, completely calm. "It doesn't matter. I always have a contingency."
She reached behind the doorframe—into the hallway, where I couldn't see—and pulled out a plastic jug. Industrial. The kind you'd find in a garage or under a workshop sink. The label was partially torn off, but what was left I could read: Flammable.
She unscrewed the jug's cap, and the smell hit me—sharp, acrid, chemical. The same solvent that killed Rosaria, in a bottle that would match the ones in George's den.
"You killed Rosaria." My voice came out thin. I was backing up, shoes sliding on the bare floor, and there was nowhere to go. "Over what? What was in that diary that was worth—"
"Everything." The word came out sharp enough to cut.
"She knew everything, Gina. About the affair—my affair, not George's.
About the money I'd been moving out of the joint accounts for years.
About where I really came from before I was Claudia the vet tech, before I was Claudia the Ferraro wife.
" Her lip curled. “She kept records the way other people keep grudges.
Every sin, every secret, every piece of leverage—all of it in that little locked book.
And she'd look at me across the dinner table with that smile—"
She splashed more solvent. It pooled along the wall, dark and shining. The fumes were making my eyes water.
"Fifty years of controlling everyone around her with the threat of exposure.
And I was supposed to just sit there and take it?
Let her hold that over me until she died of old age?
" Claudia's voice climbed. "She was never going to die of old age, Gina.
She was going to outlive us all out of pure spite. I just—accelerated the timeline."
She pulled a lighter from her pocket. Fancy silver with a monogram GF. She was still setting George up but this time for two murders. Mine and Rosaria’s.
"Claudia, don't—"
“Sorry Gina, you know too much. You found out about George and he killed you. I think the police will believe me over him, don’t you?”
She tossed the lighter.
The accelerant caught with a sound like tearing fabric—a whoosh that turned into a roar, and the baseboard became a wall of flame climbing toward the ceiling.
The heat slammed into me like a physical force.
I staggered back, arm over my face, and Claudia was already through the doorway, already in the hall, running toward the front door.
Smoke. Everywhere, instantly. Black and thick and choking, pouring off the walls where forty years of old paint blistered and peeled. The knob-and-tube wiring behind the plaster popped and sparked, and the fire found new paths, racing along the ceiling, eating through the doorframe.
I was going to die here.