It was ugly, and it was coercive, and it was, I understood, the most he had ever been able to manage, and he had managed it from the grave.”

Chapter 18 — A Gun From Beyond the Grave

Hollis set the letter down on the desk, and the silence that followed it was so complete that I could hear the old man’s breathing, and the rain, and the blood in my own ears.

I became aware, in that silence, of the physical facts of the room — the cold weight of the air, the rain still working at the glass, the faint cedar-and-tobacco ghost of my father that had never left the study.

And I became aware of the two living people in it, the old attorney who had carried this for six years and the young woman who had carried the trigger of it for six months without knowing, both of them now looking at me, waiting, because my father had arranged it so that everything turned, in the end, on what I would do next.