My former housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, called me in the middle of a weekly meeting.
She told me Alistair had been spending every night locked in his study. By sunrise, his ashtray would be overflowing with cigarette butts.
"Miss Evelyn," she said. Old habits. She'd never called me Mrs. Vanguard, even when I was. "Could you... just come by and see him? Once? He just sits there, staring at your old photos for hours."
"Take care of yourself, Mrs. Gable," I said. Then I hung up and blocked the number.
My hands didn't shake. My heart didn't skip a beat. But for the rest of the meeting, I didn't hear a word my colleagues were saying. It took my assistant calling my name three times to snap me back to reality. By then, the room was almost empty.
A few days later, Julian walked into my office and dropped a manila envelope on my desk.
"Alistair is digging," he said simply.
I opened it. Inside were copies of investigation reports. One traced the purchase record of that ruby brooch—the funds matched exactly the proceeds from my mother's emerald necklace, sold at a private estate auction three years ago. Another was an internal audit of the project leak. It pointed directly at a former VP—someone who had been very close to Seraphina's family.
Not Evelyn. Never Evelyn.
The evidence had been there all along. He just hadn't looked.
I read through the pages slowly. My thumb traced the edge of the paper over and over. My tea had gone cold; a thin film had formed on the surface, dark and bitter.
"He's not stupid," I said, my voice dry. "His reaction time is just pathetic. Five years."
Julian watched me, his eyes searching my face. "He's starting to suspect Seraphina. He knows he was wrong."
I didn't answer.
Outside, the sun was setting. The orange light cut across my desk, splitting it in two—half glowing in warmth, half buried in shadow.
I was sitting right on that line.
"Julian," I asked, looking at the dying light. "Do you think people have to smash everything to pieces before they're willing to kneel down and see what was actually inside?"
He didn't answer right away. After a long moment, he said quietly, "Some people do. And by then, it's too late."
He signaled the assistant to bring me a fresh cup of tea.
I stuffed the reports back into the envelope and handed them back to him.
"Burn them," I said. "Or shred them. They're an eyesore."
Julian took the envelope and walked over to the paper shredder in the corner.
The machine hummed—a long, low, mechanical groan.
The papers disappeared into the teeth of the shredder. The late truths, the useless guilt, that tiny, pathetic spark of hope—all of it ground into thin, unreadable strips of white confetti.
Gone.
Some things are cleaner when they're destroyed. Truth, doubt, all of it.
Whether he regrets it, whether he suspects her, who he loves, or who he hates—it's all just a pile of scrap paper now. None of it is my business anymore.