Geri Duncan is murdered by arson, allegedly at Sandra’s behest

Geri Duncan’s death by fire is the crime at the heart of Grace Lawson’s confrontation with Sandra Koval. Grace identifies Geri as the young woman in the photograph and insists that the fire was deliberate, while Sandra initially calls it an accident. Grace’s later reconstruction links the alleged killing to Geri’s pregnancy, her search for the child’s father, and the concealed identities surrounding Jack Lawson. The accusation is consequential, but the conversation does not make it a confession: Sandra denies the claim and demands proof.

The fire and the disputed account

The confrontation begins with a direct disagreement over what happened to Geri. Grace tells Sandra that she knows the woman in the photograph was Geri and that Geri was murdered. Sandra responds that Geri died in a fire, but describes the fire as accidental. Grace rejects that explanation and says it was set intentionally. When Sandra asks who told her, Grace identifies Geri’s brother, Scott Duncan. The exchange establishes both the essential claim and its source: Grace is not presenting Sandra’s own admission, but information she says came from Geri’s brother.

That distinction remains important as the conversation develops. Grace speaks with certainty when she calls the fire deliberate, but the later account of why Sandra would have wanted Geri silenced is a reconstruction of motive. Sandra does not confirm it. Instead, she eventually says Grace cannot prove what she is alleging and asks what evidence supports it. The fire is therefore presented through competing descriptions—accident, according to Sandra; intentional killing, according to Grace—rather than through a narrated scene of the fire itself.

Pregnancy and the concealed past

Grace’s proposed explanation turns on a change in Geri’s circumstances. She says that the people involved in the old events had agreed to disperse and remain silent. Sheila Lambert, Grace says, understood that she should change her name and disappear. Geri, by contrast, stayed where she was, a choice Grace describes as initially acceptable to the others. The situation changed when Geri discovered she was pregnant.

In Grace’s account, Geri then tried to find the child’s father. Shane Alworth had agreed to assume the identity of John Lawson, and, according to Grace, that arrangement required him to sever his connections and go overseas. Geri could not find him. Grace imagines that Geri came to Sandra because she wanted to start over, tell the truth, and have her child without the burden of the concealed past. These are Grace’s explanations of what Geri may have wanted, not words attributed directly to Geri.

Grace also reasons that Jack, whom she knew as her husband, would not have turned away from Geri if Geri had insisted on having the child. She suggests that he might have wanted a fresh start as well. In this reconstruction, Geri’s pregnancy matters not only as a private crisis but because the truth of the child’s parentage might reopen relationships and secrets that the group had tried to contain. Grace frames Sandra’s possible fear in terms of what could happen if Geri reached Jack and brought that hidden history into the open.

Grace’s accusation against Sandra

Grace’s account moves from possible motive to an explicit allegation. She says Sandra had to silence Geri and points to Sandra’s work as a criminal-defense attorney, arguing that her professional contacts could have helped her find a killer. Grace names Monte Scanlon as the hit man she believes Sandra reached through one of the criminals Sandra had represented. The claim places the alleged murder within a chain of access and concealment: a secret to protect, a person who might expose it, and a hired intermediary.

The narrative supplies context for Scanlon’s own view of his work, but not independent proof of Sandra’s role in Geri’s death. In a separate conversation with Scott Duncan, Scanlon calls himself an assassin for hire and says he has rules. When Scott challenges those rules as an illusion of humanity, Scanlon describes the people he killed as scum and himself as no more than a weapon. Those statements illuminate how Scanlon describes his role; they do not, by themselves, establish who commissioned the attack on Geri or what instructions he received.

The accusation remains unresolved

Grace later admits that she does not know exactly what happened after her family moved to New York. She speculates that the anniversary of the earlier events, together with Wade Larue’s release, may have prompted Sheila—or perhaps Jack—to tell the truth. She offers sleeplessness and guilt as possible reasons they might have wanted to speak, while acknowledging that she does not know which of them acted or what followed. Against that possibility, she sets her theory that Sandra could not accept a future in which the others might be forgiven while she remained responsible for Geri’s death.

The confrontation thus makes Geri’s death the point where an old agreement to stay silent may have failed. Yet Grace’s explanation contains acknowledged gaps, and Sandra’s final response keeps the question of proof open. Geri’s pregnancy, her search for the father, and the alleged hiring of Scanlon give the fire a possible motive and a path of responsibility; the exchange itself does not settle Sandra’s guilt. The event’s narrative force lies in that collision between a newly articulated history and a still-contested account.