My pulse began to pound in my ears.
The door opened.
I looked up, expecting a nurse, an officer, Dr. Reed.
Instead, a woman stepped inside.
She was in her late sixties, perhaps older, with silver-white hair pinned neatly at the nape of her neck. She wore a tailored cream coat and pearl earrings. Her face was elegant, familiar in a way that made my skin prickle.
I had seen that face in Grant’s bone structure.
In the hard line of his mouth.
In the cold assessment of his eyes.
Lydia Mercer closed the door behind her.
The dead woman smiled.
“Hello, Clara,” she said. “We need to discuss my son.”
I could not speak.
Lydia Mercer crossed the room with calm, graceful steps and sat in the chair beside my bed as if arriving for tea.
“Don’t look so frightened,” she said. “If I wanted you dead, you would not have made it to the ambulance.”
