Лиза Гарднер - Never Tell - A Novel (A D.D. Warren and Flora Dane Novel)

He loved me. He loved me, he loved me, he loved me.

And Conrad had loved me, too.

The blond detective is following me. Mr. Delaney, too, clearly concerned. Emotional clients are probably a danger to themselves and others. My mother stays behind. With Call Me Phil. She’s probably offering him a glass of water, while briefly touching his arm.

I don’t know where I’m going. I can’t exit the house. Whatever is overwhelming me here is nothing compared to the media that’s waiting to pounce outside. I move into the formal room with the baby grand. Black and gleaming. I spent so much of my childhood sitting on that bench, working those keys.

I haven’t touched it since.

I can’t be in this room. I move into the front parlor instead. I never liked this room. What kid cares about a formal parlor?

“My client needs to rest,” Mr. Delaney is informing the detective.

She doesn’t listen to him but regards me instead. “You remember me, don’t you?” she asks.

I nod. Not sitting, but walking around the small space. It’s taken me years to realize that most people do not live like this, with carefully placed silk-covered wingback chairs and antique sideboards and crystalline decanters.

“Yes.” I finally glance at her. “You looked nicer then. The sympathetic cop. Not anymore.”

The blonde smiles, not offended at all. “I was younger then. Still learning.”

“What did you learn?”

“To ask more questions. To accept fewer answers. That even the most honest person will tell a lie.”

“My client,” Mr. Delaney tries again.

I hold up a hand. “It’s okay. You can go help my mom. Or rather, save the other detective.”

Mr. Delaney gives me a stern look. Though he’s already torn. He does know my mother, and sometimes her manipulations, even done with the best of intentions, can backfire.

I feel stronger now, more certain. “She’s not going to ask me about Conrad, are you?” I address Sergeant Warren directly. Slowly, she shakes her head.

“Will you tell me about the fire?”

Another pause. She nods. We have a deal. Maybe my lawyer doesn’t understand the terms, but we do.

“It’s okay,” I tell Mr. Delaney again. “Give us a moment, please.”

“As your lawyer—”

“I know. A moment.”

He’s not happy. But I’m the client, he’s the lawyer, and he is worried about my mother. As he should be. Finally, he retreats, leaving Sergeant Warren and me alone. Last time, it had been her and me in the kitchen. My mom and the other detective in the parlor. I like this change of venue. I need it.

She does look harder, as if the past sixteen years haven’t been entirely kind to her. Or maybe she’d been right before; disillusionment was part of the job. After all, sixteen years ago she’d believed me in the matter of my father’s death. And now?

I wonder what she sees when she looks at me. Am I harder? Disillusioned? Angry? I don’t think I feel any of those things.

I’m sad. I’m lost. I am my father’s daughter, and I always saw the truth even when others didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I’ve known what to do with the information. Especially when it involved the ones I loved.

“How are you feeling?” Sergeant Warren asks me. She doesn’t take a seat in one of the washed-silk wingbacks. Neither do I.

“I don’t know.”

She tilts her head to the side. “Are you excited for the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Conrad?”

“We’d almost given up hope. We’d been trying for a bit. Nothing, and then …” I don’t have any more words to say. I place my right hand on the gentle swell of my abdomen. Another silent apology. I already have the same relationship with my child as I do with my mother.

“I have a son,” the detective offers. “Five years old. We just got him a puppy. They’re both crazy.”

I smile. “We were waiting to be surprised. It feels weird now. That Conrad died, never knowing if he was going to have a boy or girl. One of those silly things, because it’s terrible enough Conrad will never get to meet his child, what does it matter the gender?” A pause, and then, in the silence, because it’s weighing so heavily on my mind I just can’t help myself: “I still miss him.”

“Conrad?”

I look at her. Shake my head. “Do you think it will be any better for my baby? That maybe by never knowing his or her daddy, she won’t miss him as much?”

The sergeant doesn’t say anything.

“I didn’t shoot him.”

“Conrad?” she asks again.

Again, I shake my head.

She doesn’t move anymore. Neither do I. We study each other across the small space. Two women who barely know each other and yet are intricately bound by the tangle of so many questions, the weight of too much unfinished business.

“We came home to him,” I continue softly, my voice very low, which is the only tone appropriate for confessing sins. “We walked through the back door into the kitchen, and there he was.”

“Your mother was with you?” The detective asks, her tone as hushed as my own. She glances at the open doorway. Mr. Delaney will return soon enough. We both know it.

“Yes.”

“You had blood in your hair,” Sergeant Warren states firmly. “Gunpowder on your hands. If you didn’t shoot your father, how do you explain that?”

“It rained.” I can barely get the words out. Sixteen years later, and still the horror seems fresh. “I walked through the door, and it rained on me.” I touch my short hair self-consciously. “Hot blood from the ceiling.”

“What did you do?”

“I picked up the shotgun. It was on the floor in front of me. I picked it up. I don’t know why. To get it out of the way. Then I saw him. He was half hidden behind the island. But turning the corner I saw … all of him.”

Another glance toward the foyer. Footsteps, did we hear them in the distance? A tinkle of laughter. My mother flirting with Detective Phil.

“What did your mother do?”

“She screamed.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. He didn’t look real. Not like himself. I kept waiting for him to get up.”

“Who called the cops?”

I look at her. “We didn’t. I checked the shotgun. Made sure the chamber was empty—”

“You knew how to work it.”

“I always knew how to work it. My father wouldn’t bring a firearm into the home without teaching us basic safety.”

“What did you do, Evie?”

“Whatever my mother told me.”

“And she told you to confess to killing him? Not, ‘let’s call nine-one-one,’ ‘good God our loved one has just been shot’?”

I know how crazy it sounds. Back then. Today. All the hours in between. I don’t have the words.

The sergeant’s eyes narrow. “Are you covering for your mom, Evie? She and your father got in a fight. She shot him. You, being a minor with no criminal record, took the blame to save the parent you had left.”

“She was with me. She couldn’t have killed him.”

“Then why such a crazy story? Why not call the police?”

“There would be an investigation. So many questions. The potential for …” I couldn’t articulate the words back then, but I understand them now. “Scandal. I don’t think my mom knows who or why my father was shot. But she didn’t want to risk the answer to those questions. Not if they might tarnish his legacy. You have to realize, my father is more than just a man to her. He is … everything.”

The sergeant eyes me skeptically. “So she threw her sixteen-year-old daughter under the bus rather than seek justice in her husband’s murder?” A pause. “Or rather than a risk an investigation into his possible suicide?”

I don’t have to answer that question. The sergeant is finally starting to understand. My mother’s true fear. The real reason I did what I did. Sometimes, the danger isn’t from outside, but from inside ourselves.