‘Are you lying?’
Kim shook her head. ‘She began therapy as soon as you were gone. We’ve seen her records. She wanted you back. She loved you. She made a mistake and paid for it for the rest of her life.’
In saying the words, Kim felt herself come to terms with Helen’s actions. She had made a mistake and then punished herself for over twenty-nine years.
‘It’s all in black and white,’ Kim said, delaying for a moment the words that were going to hurt Zach even more, even though they would help him understand the distance that had existed between him and his mother.
‘Every child she had was an attempt to recapture you. You were her first child, natural or not, and the guilt and regret tortured her. She never stopped thinking about you, missing you, wondering where you were. She lost a child to cot death nine years after having the twins. The loss brought it all back. It was like losing you all over again.’
Zach appeared to be lost in his own thoughts, as though events over the years now made sense to him.
‘Fostering Jonathan was all about you. She was still trying to fill that space in her heart reserved for you.’ She lowered her voice. ‘She never got over losing you, and she was in the process of still trying to take care of you.’
He frowned as his brain tried to resolve what she’d told him. Kim heard soft footsteps around the door. She had to keep talking so that Gavin didn’t realise how close they were. The second he did, he would shoot that gun, and she had no idea which way.
‘Helen and William were in the process of changing their wills. They had taken out the word natural and that had nothing to do with Jonathan. He was never going to be more than a foster child because social services would never have allowed Helen to adopt again. She was changing her will because she knew by law you were still her child. She was still trying to make it up to you once she was dead.’
He stared as though seeing through her.
‘She didn’t believe me,’ he said, choking back tears. ‘I told her who I was, and she didn’t believe me. She looked horrified, scared, disgusted.’
Kim didn’t remind him that she had just witnessed him shooting her husband to death.
‘She just kept shaking her head, her eyes full of fear.’
Kim could still hear the whispering outside the door. She had to cover it up.
‘Gavin, you have to understand that—’
Her words were cut off as the heavy oak door crashed open and two figures fell into the room, just as a single gunshot rang through the house.
SEVENTY-THREE
‘Jesus Christ,’ Bryant said as Kim checked herself over for injuries.
She didn’t feel hurt. She followed his gaze to the blood spatter on the window.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Leanne said, standing up and holding her left arm at a strange angle.
Zach appeared to be rooted to the spot, staring at where Gavin had stood just seconds earlier.
Bryant shot behind the desk as a siren wailed in the background.
She looked to Leanne as her colleague disappeared behind the desk.
‘Police and ambulance as a precaution,’ Leanne said, nodding towards Bryant.
Kim approached Zach and gently took his forearm.
‘No, no, I have to stay,’ he said as his lower jaw began to chatter.
Kim removed her jacket and put it around his shoulders. The fact that the man was still standing after the onslaught of revelations he’d heard in the last half hour was testament to a depth of strength she hadn’t known he possessed.
Regardless, his body was going into shock.
‘Don’t look,’ she said, guiding him towards the door.
‘Still alive, guv,’ Bryant said as his head appeared above the desk. ‘He’s unconscious but breathing,’ he said, tracing a line from his chin across his cheek, indicating the shot had gone diagonally instead of vertically.