Della walked to the window, back to the door, looking sideways at Gaines as if reminding herself that he was in the room, that this wasn’t some hideous nightmare from which she could force herself to wake.

“I have a question for you, Della.”

She paused, looked directly at him.

“Did you kill Leon Devereaux?”

“Say nothing, Della.”

She turned, her mouth open as if to speak, silenced by the sudden appearance of Matthias, entering the room and interrupting proceedings just as she herself had done with her father.

“Do not say a word to this man,” Matthias went on. “He has no right to be here. He has no warrant. He has no evidence, no nothing.”

Gaines did not speak. He set the leather case down on the table, opened it, and withdrew the sheaf of clippings. He took three or four steps toward Della and held out his hand.

She took them from him.

“What is this?” Matthias asked, and he reached out to take them from Della.

Della snatched her hand back, walked away toward the window and Gaines felt the tension in the room increase in proportion to the slow-dawning realization that was taking place. Perhaps, once again, it was his imagination; perhaps no one but he could sense it, but it was there. He felt sure of it.

When she turned, tears in her eyes, there were many things written in her expression.

For the first time since he’d met her, Gaines believed that now she was going to tell the truth.

“This?” she asked. “This is what?”

“This is what you have done by saying nothing,” Gaines said.

“Saying nothing about what? About—”

“About nothing,” Matthias interjected. “About some wild flight of imagination that Sheriff Gaines has convinced himself is the truth.”

“About the fact that your brother Eugene was the one who killed Nancy Denton. Matthias knew, your father as well, and Judge Wallace, and maybe even Leon Devereaux. I don’t know how many more people knew what really happened back then, twenty years ago, but I think Matthias was the only one who knew what happened afterward, right, Matthias?”

Matthias Wade didn’t respond. He looked back at Gaines implacably, as if Gaines had commented on nothing more consequential than the weather.

“And this?” Della said, holding out the clippings. “This is Eugene’s doing? These are people Eugene has murdered?”

“Seems that when you release a monster from the cage, he doesn’t stop being a monster,” Gaines said.

“Matthias?” Della said. “Matthias, is this true? Is Eugene responsible for all of this? Did Eugene kill Nancy? Is that what happened?”

She looked back at Gaines. “All this time, I wanted to believe it had nothing to do with us.”

“Della,” Matthias Wade said, his tone authoritative, almost threatening.

“She just ran away from home. That was all. She was scared, something happened, something we knew nothing about, and she ran away from home. I wanted to believe she would come back, just like Michael did, and I never even imagined that she had been murdered by someone in my own family—”

“Della, seriously, enough is enough.” Matthias took a step forward.

Della turned and looked at him, her expression one of dismay and horror. “And then I talked to Sheriff Gaines, and he told me some things, Matthias. He told me some painful things, and it got me to thinking that it might have been you. You could have done this terrible thing. You sent that terrible man to frighten Clifton, and that man cut off his fingers. Did you tell him to do that, or did he just get inventive?”

Matthias advanced again and was now within arm’s length of his sister.

“Yes, I started to think that you could have killed Nancy. And then I thought no, you could never have done that. You weren’t capable of murder, surely. And then I started thinking that if it wasn’t you, then who could it be? Who would you be so eager to protect? There was only one person. There could only have been one possible person, right? Our father. That’s who you were protecting. All this while doing nothing but hiding the truth from everyone, trying to protect our father, trying to protect the family name, trying to protect your inheritance and not see it wasted on defending—”

Matthias lashed out and caught her across the side of the face. She fell awkwardly, the newspaper clippings spilling from her hand.

Matthias Wade stood silently, staring at Gaines, ignoring his sister as she struggled to her feet.

“My brother is dead,” Matthias Wade said, “and so are Nancy Denton and Michael Webster and Leon Devereaux. They are all dead. No one’s coming back, Sheriff. No one’s going to substantiate what you are saying. No one is going to make any statements or testify in court, and even if there were someone to help you, I think you would find that the courts were not going to give you whatever justice you were hoping for.”

Della was on her feet. “This is true,” she said. “What he is saying is true, Matthias? Eugene killed Nancy, and he’s been doing this . . . these things, and all this time you knew about it? Is this true?”

Matthias looked back at his sister. “Don’t even talk to me, Della. Don’t you act judgmental with me. How fucking dare you? Drugs, abortions, sleeping with colored men. You are a fucking whore just like Father says you are. You are a worthless fucking whore, a worthless human being, and if you weren’t my sister, maybe Leon would have come and visited with you as well.”

Della snatched a handful of clippings from the floor and thrust them at Matthias.

“You did this,” she said. “You are as guilty as Eugene. You knew what he did to Nancy. You knew what he’s been doing since, and you did nothing? You did absolutely nothing?”

“What would you have had me do, Della? Kill him? Is that what you would have had me do? Kill my own brother? He was sick. He was mentally ill. Like our mother, alcoholic that she was. Drowning her depression in whiskey. You have no idea how much time and effort and energy it takes to control what happens around this family. You have not the faintest clue how much trouble you have caused for me. Eugene was your brother, too, Della, and just because he lost his mind when our mother died, you think that gave me license to neglect him, to abandon him, to pretend he was no longer part of us. You can’t explain what he did. He believed he was doing the right thing. He believed that maybe he could bring her back. He honestly believed that. And our father? Lost his mind, too, eh? What would you have me do? Kill all of them, anyone that doesn’t meet your standards of sanity? Oh, and what a standard that would be, Della. What a fucking standard that would be!”

Della slapped her brother. The sound was ferocious. He looked at her as if she had barely touched him.

He smiled strangely, and then he lowered his head as if dismissing her from the room.

Della, her eyes ablaze, tears rolling down her cheeks, caught somewhere in the midst of a whirlwind of emotions, stormed out.

Gaines heard her as she ran across the hall and started up the stairs.

Matthias Wade turned back to Gaines. “It’s over,” Wade said. “The game is finished. The people who really did these things are dead. Perhaps it is time for you to just accept the fact that sometimes things happen, and there is nothing you can do to influence or change any of it.”

“I don’t believe that, Mr. Wade.”

Wade nodded slowly. He looked down at the clippings on the floor, and then back up at Gaines. “Who’s to say that one life is worth more than another? Not for us to say, right? I don’t know about you, Sheriff, but I tend to be fatalistic about these things. If I were a religious man, if I held to the view that God created all men in His own image, then He created Eugene just the same as He created me or you or Della or these children. Maybe there is a balance in all things. Maybe He gives and at the same time He takes away, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Perhaps these people were all meant to die, and if it had not been Eugene to take care of that, then it would have been someone else—”