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

I settled for a simple garden salad. One month after our fiery experience, we are both recovering. Flora’s throat still holds a rasp. I cough up black soot that makes me fear for my baby. Medically, however, we’ve both been checked up, down, and sideways. My health is good, my baby amazing. No more gentle swelling; I now have a firmly established baby bump and I couldn’t be more grateful. Every day I start the morning talking to my baby. Letting him or her know how happy I am to be a mom. How I can’t wait to finally meet in person. How much I’m already totally in love.

“And your daddy loves you, too,” I always whisper. Because in my heart, I know that is true. Conrad had his secrets. But they were merely painful, not sordid. My husband was a good man. A great man, many might say, working quietly and discreetly for others.

Sergeant Warren tells me they’re still piecing it all together, but with information from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and testimony from the ex-wife Conrad was helping keep hidden, the Boston PD had been able to track down several other women Conrad had assisted over the years. Flora could’ve been one of them. She doesn’t talk about it. And I don’t pry. We are both women who understand there’s no point to the coulda, woulda, shouldas of life.

Flora makes the transition from Route 1 to another windy rural road, then another and another. She is humming slightly, her fingers tapping the wheel.

We’ve spent some time together these past few weeks, first at the hospital, then being debriefed by the police, then just … because. The day I was discharged from the hospital, she and D.D. seemed to have already worked out a plan: a month-to-month rental of a cute little home in Waltham. Maybe not the best location ultimately, given my job, but then again, I haven’t been to work in months and, with the baby coming and no family of my own to say do this, stay there, think about that, the rental was as good a start as any.

Who knew there’d come a time when I’d miss my mother’s overbearing ways?

I had lunch with the school principal and my friend Cathy Maxwell last week. It was awkward, as I expected. And yet … They were both so kind. We’re so sorry we didn’t know. What can we do? How can we help?

I feel like I’ve spent my life putting up walls, hiding behind my preconceptions while judging people for their own. I’m too shy to have real friends. And who would like some awkward woman most notorious for having shot her own father?

I told them the truth at lunch. About all of it. My dad. Conrad. The men I loved. The people I lost. The mother who died for me even though I’d gone most of my life feeling as though she didn’t even like me.

They cried. They got up, gave me hugs. They asked about what I wanted to do with my future and of course I needed to think about my baby, but bear in mind I’m a gifted teacher and the students love me and they both hoped I’d come back to work, even if it wasn’t until the fall.

I cried. I hugged them back. We scheduled a time to get together again, and it occurred to me, this could be my life. This could’ve always been my life. I just have to reach out. I have to keep some doors open.

Especially after losing so much.

Now, Flora. She’s been working on me for weeks. I need to meet her mother. Her mother needs to meet me. We will love each other.

My first instinct, of course, was to decline. I don’t want to be a bother, I’ve already taken up so much of Flora’s time … So of course I forced myself to say yes. I’m not trying to replace my mother, I remind myself firmly. Because to picture her at all, her last determined rush into the flames, taking Mr. Delaney with her …

I still can’t think about it. On my bad days, I’m angry. The whole thing was her fault anyway. The selfish, narcissistic witch, plotting Katarina Ivanova’s murder in a fit of envy, then letting me carry the burden of my father’s death for the sake of his legacy. Myself, even my baby, were merely stage pieces in the theater that was her life. She dashed into those flames, I tell myself, because that was the dramatic thing to do, and she always loved a good drama.

My mother died. The police recovered her and Mr. Delaney’s bodies at the foot of the stairs. Still tangled together. Completely and totally burnt to a crisp.

My mother died.

My mother told me to run. My mother charged Mr. Delaney and plunged them both into the inferno.

My mother died.

I just can’t process it.

I’m rich. This is a different thought for me, too. A good one, because God knows I and my baby need the money. I’ve been working on finding a lawyer. Not a criminal defense attorney this time. Right after the fire, I didn’t know what would happen: Mr. Delaney had confessed to me that he’d killed Conrad, not to mention my father, but then he’d also gone and died, which made it my word against whatever the police believed to be the case.

Sergeant Warren told me not to worry. Delaney might have arranged to burn down his own town house, but not before removing his computer, valuables, and personal papers. The detectives found a treasure trove of information in his office. Including a confession he’d written years ago, then locked in his personal safe. Maybe an attempt to purge his sins, sleep better at night? I don’t know.

Apparently, the computer experts would be tearing apart his hard drive for months to come, and with my help figuring out all of Conrad’s usernames, they could now rebuild his own activities online, uncovering the very dangerous dance that Conrad had started, thinking he was thwarting a hired assassin, but instead unwittingly exposing himself and his activities to Mr. Delaney, who then decided Conrad had grown too dangerous to live.

I don’t get to hear about it as much, but I’ve caught snippets of conversation between Flora and D.D.—the feds are reworking Jacob Ness’s computer. In fact, they are using some of Conrad’s usernames to track Ness’s online activities during Flora’s abduction. A local expert, Keith Edgar, is helping. I only know this because D.D. likes to say Keith’s name to watch Flora blush. Interesting.

Flora is waiting for something. Wants something. From time to time she snaps at D.D., have you heard anything new, what the hell is Quincy doing anyway? D.D. counsels patience. She is clearly waiting for information, too. But I can tell she’s much more worried about what the information will mean.

The truth hurts. I know that. Sergeant Warren knows that. Flora will figure out it, all in good time. And when she does, D.D. and I and maybe this Keith guy will be there for her.

My husband is gone.

We loved each other. We created a home together. We made a life together. And we lied and we lied and we lied.

I miss his smile. I miss the solid strength of his arms. I miss the look of wonder on his face when he contemplated the swell of my stomach, the mystery of our unborn child.

And now I will raise our baby alone.

I think I will teach. Return to my classroom and my brilliant, lazy, frustrating, hormonal, but never boring students. I feel like if I don’t put one stake in the ground, one piece of something familiar, I will become completely untethered and float away.

Too much of my life has been lies. I get to own that. Too much of my life has been isolating. I get to own that, too. And too much of my life has been spent running away instead of running toward. I want something to run toward. My child. A community. Friends.

I think Flora and I are friends. She doesn’t know it yet, but once my lawyer sorts everything out, Flora will be coming into an inheritance of her own. I’ll disguise it somehow. Anonymous gift, legacy from a long-last aunt. There’s always a way.