chapter 10
I leaned back slowly. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing improper,” she said. “Only information, if you come across any. And in return, I’ll give you some.”
She slid a thin envelope across the table.
Inside was a copy of an insurance policy application with Rose Birkin’s name typed neatly across the top.
Beneficiary: Ethan Shaw.
The date hit me first.
It had been filed three weeks before the plane crash in my previous life.
My fingers tightened so hard on the paper that it crackled.
In my memory, Rose had been the victim. The soft, doomed center of everything. The girl he avenged. The saint he built my destruction around.
But saints did not take out life insurance naming their married lover as beneficiary three weeks before getting on a plane she had sworn she didn’t want to board.
“Where did you get this?”
Mrs. Shaw’s eyes were steady. “From a man who owed me a favor.”
“Does Ethan know?”
“No.” A beat. “And if you have any sense, you won’t tell him until you understand what it means.”
After she left, I sat in the empty sunroom until the tea turned cold.
My mind kept circling the same impossible shape.
Either Rose had planned to leave and wanted Ethan protected.
Or Rose had planned something else entirely.