Slowly . . .

Reaching . . .

Steadily . . .

Kay draws her last breath and spirals into the darkness.

Sitting on the couch with Jordan on her lap, reading him a story, Beck has managed to put the remaining questions surrounding her mother’s e-mail out of her mind for the time being. Losing herself in the silly rhyme and rhythm of Dr. Seuss is just what the doctor ordered—particularly on the heels of several failed attempts to get through Jordan’s first book choice—Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever—without breaking down sobbing.

Mom bought that book for him when he was born, her first grandchild. She used to read it for him sitting in this very spot, cradling him in her lap, even as an infant. He doesn’t remember that, of course, any more than he’ll eventually remember more recent times with her.

We should have taken pictures, Beck thinks, turning a page and pausing the story so that Jordan can absorb the picture first, as he likes to do, tracing the colorful figures with a chubby index finger.

We shouldn’t have just posed for photos on big occasions like Christmas morning and birthdays.

Yes, they should have captured the little things, the everyday moments that feel like a dime a dozen when they’re happening but are priceless when they’re gone.

“Anybody home?” Teddy calls from the kitchen.

Beck breaks off reading long enough to call, “In here!”

Teddy comes in, looking instantly relieved to see them. He must have told Beck half a dozen times to be sure to lock the doors after he and dad left . . .

Even though whoever killed Mom came in through a window.

A random stranger?

The thought is no less chilling two weeks after the fact, and yet . . .

She wants to think that her mother died secure in the love of her family and friends; can’t bear to think that she drew her last breath thinking she’d been betrayed.

That e-mail exchange . . . the one her friend had mentioned . . . doesn’t seem to exist. Either she’d lied about it—why?—or it’s been deleted.

Why? And by whom? By Mom, before she died? By whoever stole her cell phone and laptop?

“Aunt Beck is reading to me, Daddy. Hop . . . Hop . . . Hop on Pop . . .”

“Why don’t you hop right up here on Pop, big guy.” Teddy holds out his arms and his son stands up on the couch and leaps into them.

Watching them hug, Beck smiles wistfully.

Maybe someday she’ll have a child of her own.

After this business with Keith is settled, and she’s had time to regroup, rebuild . . .

Maybe.

“How did everything go?” she asks Teddy, standing up and setting the Dr. Seuss book aside. “With Dad and the paperwork?”

He shrugs. “It could have been better. Louise did her best, but—”

“Louise?”

“From the insurance company.”

Beck stares.

“She doesn’t know what happened, Ted,” Dad says from the doorway. “I didn’t want her to worry. I didn’t want any of you to worry, but . . .” He shrugs. “Too late now.”

I didn’t want her to worry . . .

It’s almost exactly what he’d said about Mom the day Beck ran into him having lunch with Louise.

Louise . . . from the insurance company?

“I had to let Mom’s life insurance policy lapse. I couldn’t afford the premium. I was trying to figure out a payment plan, a way to keep it going—that’s why I met with Louise the day I ran into you in that restaurant. It threw me off, seeing you there, knowing you didn’t know that Mom was sick again . . .”

No wonder. No wonder he’d been so edgy. No wonder she’d thought he was hiding something. To think she assumed the worst about him . . .

“We were in the tail end of the policy’s grace period when she died. It ran out at midnight, but the coroner—” Her father breaks off, takes a deep breath. “The coroner pinpointed her death after twelve. Too late, according to Louise.”

“Oh, Dad.” Beck walks across the room and puts her arms around him. “It’s okay.”

“We’re out of money. I can’t pay the mortgage.”

She shrugs. “Sell the house.”

“I’m going to have to. But even then . . .”

“It’s okay, Dad.”

Money . . . a house . . . even people, and memories . . .

Things you have. Things you lose, no matter how hard you try to hold on.

“It’s not okay.” He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t have wanted this. I let her down.”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t let her down. Dad, you loved her. She knew that. We all knew that.”

In the end, that’s the thing, the only thing, that matters. The only thing that lasts forever, if you’re lucky enough to find it. The love.

Jordan might not remember Mom, but her love is his legacy, and Beck knows it will live on forever, through him, through all of them.

Kay is gone.

Holding her hand, Landry felt her go; felt the muscles unclench, felt the life evaporate from her flesh.

Shaken, she stands and backs away, toward the doorway, then remembers . . .

Whoever did this is lurking somewhere out there.

She’s better off in here, locked in, until help gets here. The 911 operator assured her they’re on the way.

She presses the button in the doorknob and moves back across the room to the bed. Sinking onto the edge of the mattress, she thinks of Elena.

If she did it, then she’s not vulnerable.

But what if it was someone else? Jenna, or Jaycee, or Bruce . . .

Then I need to warn Elena.

Her gaze falls on a cell phone—Kay’s cell phone—sitting on the bedside table.

Kay used it to call Detective Burns, to let her know about Jenna Coeur in the airport, and now . . .

Now it’s too late.

The detective needs to know what’s going on, Landry realizes.

She hits Redial.

The phone rings . . . rings . . . rings . . . rings . . .

And goes into voice mail. “You’ve reached Detective Crystal Burns. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If this is an urgent matter, please call my cell phone at—”

Wait a minute.

This is supposed to be her cell phone.

Landry lowers the phone and looks at the screen to see which number she just dialed.

It’s not the one Detective Burns gave her on that card, the one she’d committed to memory. The one Kay swore she’d called.

Why would she lie?

Does it matter? She’s dead. It’s not as if she killed herself, much less Meredith, or Tony Kerwin . . .

There’s no evidence, even, that Tony was murdered.

She replays everything Bruce told her about that. He said it would be possible, that certain drugs mimic a heart attack and wouldn’t be detected in an autopsy if—

“Oh my God.”

Stunned, she remembers exactly what he was saying when she was on the phone with him earlier, right before she thought she heard someone on the stairs.

“There are very few places where those drugs would even be found. Succinylcholine alone—SUX—is used in anesthesiology and it’s used along with liquid potassium chloride for lethal injection executions.”

Those last three words were lost on her at the time.

Now . . .

She turns around to stare at Kay, lying on the floor, remembering . . .

Remembering how she’d posted about her brush with fame: having worked at the federal prison where the Oklahoma City Bomber was executed over a decade ago.

But why would she want Tony Kerwin dead?

Because Elena hated him?

Because . . .

Because of the stress he was causing?

Dangerous stress. Stress that could cause a recurrence.

And what about Meredith? Why would Kay ever want Meredith dead? She loved her; everyone loved her. She was truly shaken up at her funeral; you can’t fake that kind of emotion.

Landry can hear sirens in the distance.

They’re coming. Thank God, they’re coming.

She and Kay had talked about the dying process the night of Meredith’s funeral. About the so-called blessing that their friend hadn’t suffered a long, lingering death; hadn’t wasted away like Kay’s mother, or Whoa Nellie, or so many of the others . . .