River’s End

now.”
    “I appreciate that, and your taking the time to see me, Ms. Melbourne.”
    She didn’t sigh out loud, but he saw the rise and fall of her shoulders. “Jamie. He’s spoken to me about you often enough that I think of you as Noah.”
    “Has he? I didn’t realize the two of you had had that much contact.”
    “Frank was an integral part of the most difficult period of my life.”
    “Most people tend to separate themselves from people who remind them of difficult periods.”
    “I don’t,” she said briefly and walked toward a large fan-shaped swimming pool bordered in white stone and cool pink flowers. “Your father helped me through a tremendous loss, helped see that my family got justice. He’s an exceptional man.”
    Your father’s a great man, Olivia had told him once. And later. Beside him, you ‘re very small.
    Noah turned off the ache of that and nodded. “I think so.”
    “I’m glad to hear it.”
    As they skirted the pool, he could see the deep green of tennis courts in the distance. Tucked behind oleanders and roses was a scaled-down version of the main house.
    “I don’t like your work,” she said abruptly.
    “All right.”
    She stopped, turned to him. “I don’t understand it. Or why you do it. Your father dedicated his life to putting people who take the lives of others in prison. And you’re dedicating yours to putting their names in print, to glorifying what they’ve done.”
    “Have you read my work?”
    “No.”
    “If you had, you’d know I don’t glorify the people I write about or what they’ve done.”
    “Writing about them is glory enough.”
    “Writing about them lays it out,” Noah corrected. “The people, the acts, the history, the motives. The whys. My father was interested in the whys, too. How and when aren’t always enough. Don’t you want to know why your sister died, Jamie?”
    “I know why she died. She died because Sam Tanner killed her. Because he was jealous and sick and vicious enough not to want her to live without him.”
    “But they’d loved each other once, enough to marry and make a child. Enough, even when they were supposedly having serious marital difficulties, for her to open the door to him.”
    “And for that last act of love, he killed her.” This time, Jamie’s voice was hot and bitter. “He used her feelings, her loyalty, her need to keep her family together. He used them against her just as surely as he used the scissors.”
    “You could tell me about her the way no one else can. About what she thought, what she felt, about what happened to turn her life into a nightmare.”
    “What about her privacy?”
    “She’s never had that, has she?” He said it gently. “I can promise to give her the truth.”
    She looked away again, wearily. “There are a lot of degrees in the truth.”
    “Give me yours.”
    “Why is he letting you do this? Why is he talking to you, to anyone after all these years?”
    “He’s dying.” He said it straight and watched her face.
    Something flickered across it, glinted in her eyes, then was gone. “Good. How long is it going to take him?”
    A hard woman, Noah thought, hard and honest. “He has brain cancer. They diagnosed it in January and gave him under a year.”
    “Well, justice wins. So he wants his brief time in the sun again before he goes to hell.”
    “That may be what he wants,” Noah said evenly. “What he’ll get is a book written my way. Not his.”
    “You’ll write it with or without my cooperation.”
    “Yes, but I’ll write a better book with it.”
    She believed he meant it. He had his father’s clear, assessing eyes. “I don’t want to hate you for it,” she said almost to herself. “I’ve centered all my hate on one place all these years. I don’t want to diffuse it at this point—especially now that his time is nearly up.”
    “But you have something to say, haven’t you? Things you haven’t said yet.”
    “Maybe I do. I spoke with my husband about this yesterday. He surprised me.”
    “How?”
    “He thinks we should give you your interviews. To counterbalance what Sam tells you, David thinks, to make sure whatever ugliness he’s formed in his mind doesn’t stand on its own. We were there, part of their lives. We know what happened to it. So, yes, maybe I do have something to say.”
    She ripped at a hibiscus, tore the fragile pink blossom to shreds. “I’ll talk to you, Noah, and so will David. Let’s go inside so I can check my