"You've been here longer than she has," he said quietly, not looking up from the photograph on his desk. "Did you ever see anything? Anything strange the week my father died?"
Rosie hesitated. She remembered small things now, things she'd buried because they seemed unimportant at the time: Emily arguing with Thomas's father behind closed doors; Emily insisting on being the one to check on him that final morning, sending the household staff away with unusual urgency; a torn sleeve on Emily's blouse that she explained away as gardening.
She told him everything. Thomas listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening with every detail. When Rosie finished, he sat in silence for a long moment.
"I trusted her with my father's care," he said finally. "I trusted her with my life."
Rosie didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Sometimes silence was the only comfort she had to offer.
Later that day, Emily cornered Thomas in the hallway—the same hallway—her composure cracking at the edges.
"You don't understand what really happened," she said. "There's more to this than that photo. I can explain everything, Thomas, please."
"Then explain," he said, his voice flat and dangerous in a way Rosie had never heard from him. "Explain why you hid a photograph of my father's body in a locker instead of calling the police the day you found him."