Chapter 38
The front door closed behind Whitlock, Foley, and Bryan, leaving a silence that settled over the house like a storm waiting to break.
For a moment, no one moved.
Renee, who’d just rushed into the room as her husband was being escorted outside, looked at the front door and then at me, confused by what had just taken place.
“Why was my husband just taken out of your house in handcuffs?” she asked.
Before I had a chance to respond, Mia stepped forward. “I’d like it to come from me, if that’s okay.”
“Of course,” I said. “Why don’t we all sit down?”
Giovanni excused himself to attend to a business matter, and the three of us went to the den. Renee and Mia sat on the couch, and I took a seat across from them.
“Mia, what’s going on?” Renee asked.
“Bryan lost his job six weeks ago.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t fired,” Mia continued. “The company needed to make some cuts, and he was one of the people they had to let go.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Mia’s telling the truth,” I said. “I confirmed it with his boss today.”
Renee looked at me.
Then at Mia.
Then back at me again.
“I don’t understand,” Renee said. “He’s been going to work every day.”
“Not every day,” Mia said. “His boss admitted to giving him some work here and there while Bryan looked for a new job, but most of the time when he told you he was going to work, he wasn’t.”
Renee’s eyes filled with tears. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
I could think of several reasons.
Pride.
Fear.
Shame.
All the things people carried when they believed they had failed.
“There’s more,” Mia said. “When the police first talked to Bryan after Wren died, he claimed he was working that night. We now know that isn’t true. And there’s something else. One of Mia’s neighbors reported seeing a truck in the neighborhood around the time Wren was killed.”
“What does that have to do with Bryan?”
“The description matches the truck he drives.”
“I need to ask you a question, Renee,” I said. “Several weeks ago, did you happen to see any scratches on Bryan’s arms or legs?”
She tucked one foot beneath the other. “I didn’t see anything, no. But one morning he was putting a shirt on, and he had a bandage on his arm. I asked him what happened, and he acted like it was no big deal. He said he tripped and fell at work.”
“The night Wren was murdered, Coco scratched the person who attacked her. Skin tissue was recovered from beneath her nails. The moment Coco saw Bryan tonight, she growled and then started barking.”
“And that’s not like her,” Mia said.
Up to now, Renee had been in denial, but as she sat there, processing everything we said, grief turned into something different—anger.
“When we lost the court case, Bryan changed,” Renee said.
“What do you mean?” Mia asked.
“At first he was angry. He said Grandpa made a mistake. I wanted to forget about it and move on. But he kept talking about the house, obsessing over it, saying it wasn’t fair, that I deserved at least part of it after everything I’d done for him.
The thing is, I never wanted to go to court over the house. It was Bryan’s idea.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t know. He’s my husband. He convinced me I was doing the right thing. He said you were a … a …”
“It’s okay,” Mia said. “You can tell me.”
“He called you a privileged brat. I’m sorry.”
Mia reached out, grabbing Renee’s hand. “It isn’t your fault.”
“It is my fault. I should have realized what he’d done. Before Wren died, he said something that shocked me. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but now … now I am starting to see everything I didn’t.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said if Mia wasn’t involved with the house, he was certain Wren would have agreed to split it with me.”
A knot formed in my stomach.
“All this time, the signs were right in front of me, and I didn’t see them,” Renee said. “How could he do this to me? How could he take my cousin from me? From you, Mia? I’ll never, ever forgive him for this!”
Anger turned to emotion as the tears fell.
“It’s all my fault, Mia,” Renee said. “All of it. I let you down. I let this … this monster into our family. I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Mia said. “He did. This is all on him.”
“What am I supposed to say to my kids? How do I tell them that their father … their father is a—”
“We’ll figure it out together,” Mia said.
Renee wiped the tears from her eyes, blinking at Mia like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “After what Bryan’s done, I can’t believe you’d want anything to do with me.”
“We’re family. I may not have always been there before, but I’m here now.”
As I watched the two women sitting together, I couldn’t help thinking that for all the damage Bryan had caused, one thing had happened despite him. Mia and Renee had found their way back to each other. And for the first time since Wren died, neither of them had to face what came next alone.