Chapter 3

The interrogation room was cold and gray. Detective Stevens, a man with tired eyes and a cynical slant to his mouth, sat across from me. A file with my name on it was on the table between us.

"Maria Fuller," he said, his voice gravelly. "You show up at your ex-lover' s wedding, uninvited. You whisper something in his ear, and he immediately butchers his new bride. You' re going to tell me what you said to him."

"No," I said.

He leaned forward, his patience already thin. "This isn' t a game. A young woman is dead. Caleb Hughes is in a catatonic state. You are the only person who knows what triggered him. What did you say?"

"My words are not a crime, Detective."

"Incitement to murder is a crime," he shot back. "We have dozens of witnesses who saw you approach him. They saw you whisper to him. Then he snapped. Connect the dots for me, Maria."

I stayed silent. I looked at the two-way mirror on the wall, knowing the Hugheses were probably on the other side, their money and influence already working to spin this narrative. They would paint me as a jealous, manipulative ex. It was the easiest, cleanest story.

"He has no history of violence," Stevens continued, flipping through his notes. "Everyone in town loves him. The gentle vet who wouldn' t hurt a fly. But he stabs his fiancée to death in front of two hundred people. That doesn' t just happen. You made it happen."

"Prove it," I said softly.

His frustration was a tangible thing in the small room. He slammed the file shut. "We will. We' ll dig into every corner of your life. We' ll find out what hold you have on him."

They held me for forty-eight hours. They questioned me again and again. Stevens tried different tactics. He was aggressive, then sympathetic, then threatening. I gave him nothing. My silence was a wall he couldn' t break.

The case stalled. With no confession from me and a catatonic suspect, the prosecution had nothing. There was no motive they could present to a jury that made any sense.

That' s when the Hugheses' lawyers took over. They spent a fortune on psychiatrists and experts. The narrative shifted. Caleb wasn' t a monster; he was a victim of a sudden, inexplicable psychotic break. He was mentally incompetent, unfit to stand trial.

They won. Caleb was sent to a private, high-end psychiatric facility, a comfortable prison designed to look like a resort. Not a jail cell. His parents made sure of that. They would control his "recovery" just as they had controlled his entire life.