In the darkest place she had ever been, she had held onto the single comfort that her daughter was safe, that her daughter was loved, that her daughter was with family.

And it was the same Richard who had taken the witness stand and testified, gravely, regretfully, that he had seen Elena arguing bitterly with the victim, a prominent real estate developer named Marcus Vance, only hours before Vance was found stabbed to death in his downtown office.

That testimony had been one of the heaviest stones in the wall that buried her.

Elena had sat in that courtroom and listened to her brother-in-law describe an argument that had never happened, and she had told herself he must be mistaken, confused by grief, misremembering.