Chapter 8 - The Woman Cormac Couldn’t Forget
Cormac ripped the trapdoor open.
A tunnel ran beneath the church.
They followed.
Ray was gone.
Again.
But this time June knew he was alive.
That changed everything.
It also made her furious.
Back at the diner, Evelyn revealed the rest.
Ray had deliberately stayed hidden because Patrick believed June possessed the original evidence gathered by her father.
Ray had spent decades making sure Patrick never discovered she didn’t.
June stared.
“My father died because of this?”
“Yes.”
“Ray knew?”
“Yes.”
June closed her eyes.
Cormac sat beside her.
She did not move away.
“What happens if Patrick learns I don’t have it?”
Evelyn answered.
“He kills Ray because Ray stops being useful.”
“So we keep lying.”
“Yes.”
June looked at Cormac.
“You’re good at that.”
He accepted the blow.
Later, Evelyn and Cormac spoke alone.
June overheard enough to understand something unexpected.
Evelyn had not returned for Cormac.
Whatever marriage they once had was over.
Cormac seemed to know it.
There was grief.
But not romantic hope.
When Evelyn left, June found him sitting in booth six.
She brought coffee.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good. I was getting tired of being the only disaster.”
Cormac looked up.
“You make jokes when you’re afraid.”
“You lock doors.”
“Fair.”
June sat opposite him.
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“Still?”
Cormac considered it.
“I love who she was. I don’t know the woman who came through your door.”
June nodded.
“That happens.”
“With Ray?”
She looked at her hands.
“I love my husband. But I don’t know the man I saw in that church.”
Cormac’s gaze softened.
For a moment, they were simply two middle-aged people sitting in a diner after midnight, grieving marriages that had somehow survived and died at the same time.
Cormac reached across the table.
He stopped before touching her hand.
June noticed.
Permission.
Something Ray had stopped asking for years ago.
She turned her palm upward.
Cormac took it.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No music.
No grand declaration.
His thumb moved once across her knuckles.
June’s eyes filled.
“I’m too old for this.”
“For holding hands?”
“For whatever this is.”
“You’re forty-eight.”
“And you’re fifty-three.”
“Ancient.”
She smiled.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
His eyes held hers.
June looked away first.
The diner phone rang.
Cormac released her.
June answered.
Ray.
“June, listen carefully.”
Her heart raced.
“Where are you?”
“No time. Patrick knows about the ledger.”
“We have it.”
“Not that ledger.”
June looked at Cormac.
“What other ledger?”
“The one your father made.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Yes, you do.”
June froze.
“Ray—”
“You’ve had it your entire life.”
Her mind raced.
Then she remembered the only object she had kept from childhood.
Her father’s recipe book.
It sat in a drawer beneath the diner register.
June walked slowly toward it.
“Ray?”
“Don’t open it there.”
Too late.
She pulled out the old red book.
A seam along the spine looked wrong.
Cormac saw it.
He carefully cut the binding.
A microfilm strip slid onto the counter.
June stared.
Her father’s evidence.
Real.
All along.
Ray whispered through the phone:
“Now run.”
The lights went out.
Glass shattered in the kitchen.
Cormac pulled June down.
Footsteps entered the diner.
May you like
Then Patrick’s voice came from the darkness.
“Thank you, June. I’ve been looking for that for thirty-six years.”
