For a long moment Ronan just looked at me, and I watched something break open behind his eyes, grief and guilt tangled together in a way that would have gutted me if I had let myself feel it instead of holding onto the anger like a rope I refused to let go of.
I didn't kill your brother, he said finally, low and steady despite the way his hands had curled into fists at his sides. I buried the man who did. And I've been protecting his sister ever since without knowing it was you standing in my garage this entire time.
The words did not land the way I expected them to. I stood there holding the wreckage of my own certainty, torn between the ledger in his hands and the raw honesty in his voice, unable to fully believe either one, unable to walk away either.
Explain, I said. All of it. Now.
