Chương 10
“You were seventeen.”
“I knew people.”
“You called your dad.”
His breathing became ragged.
“That is what sons are allowed to do.”
He shook his head.
“Grandma said—”
“I know what she said.”
I held him tighter.
“She was wrong.”
He covered his face with his good hand.
I looked over his shoulder at Mark’s desk.
At the papers.
At the evidence of choices none of us had understood.
For fourteen months, Evelyn had allowed Lucas to believe he caused his father’s death.
Maybe she had done worse than allow it.
Maybe she had needed him to believe it.
The doorbell rang downstairs.
Beth went to answer it.
A minute later she returned with one of the uniformed officers from the funeral.
He carried evidence bags and wore blue nitrile gloves.
Lucas stepped away from me and wiped his face.
The officer took photographs before touching anything.
Then he stopped over the folder labeled L.
“What’s this?”
I told him.
He bagged the contents one page at a time.
When he lifted the bottom sheet, something underneath remained on the carpet.
A small business card.
Holloway Financial Services.
On the back, in Mark’s handwriting, were three lines.
If she contacts you, do not discuss the children.
Everything goes through me.
If anything happens to me, call Claire.
The officer read the card twice before sliding it into an evidence sleeve.
Lucas stood beside me with a tissue wrapped around his knuckles.
“What does that mean?”
The officer looked at him.
“It means the detective will want to ask Mr. Holloway some questions.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
Lucas exhaled through his nose.
He had started doing that when he was twelve and trying not to argue with Mark.
The resemblance hurt.
The officer sealed the last document and carried the bags downstairs.
Beth followed him to lock the front door.
I stayed in the office with Lucas.
The empty file drawer hung open between us.
“Sit down.”
“I’m okay.”
I raised an eyebrow.
He sat on the floor.
I found the first-aid box in the bathroom and came back with antiseptic and gauze.
Lucas watched me unwrap the tissue from his hand.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You punched my wall.”
“Technically Dad’s wall.”
“It became my wall when he died.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Hold still.”
The cut across his middle knuckle was shallow.
I cleaned it.
He hissed.
“You’re enjoying that.”
“Deeply.”
That got half a smile.
Then he looked toward Mark’s desk.
“Do you think Dad knew Grandma might hurt him?”
I taped gauze over the cut.
“I don’t know.”
“He wrote ‘if anything happens to me.’”
“People say that in legal stuff.”
“On the back of a business card?”
I had no answer.
Lucas flexed his fingers.
“I keep thinking about that Saturday.”
“You’re going to hurt yourself doing that.”
“I’m already hurt.”
“I mean differently.”
He looked at me.
“Did you ever think Grandma was dangerous?”
The question sat between us.
Dangerous was not the word I would have used.
Controlling.
Cruel.
Possessive.
Expert at making generosity feel like debt.
But dangerous?
“No.”
“Not even after Dad died?”
“No.”
He nodded as though disappointed in me.
I did not blame him.
“Did Dad?”
I asked.
Lucas picked at the edge of the gauze.
“He stopped letting her pick me up from school.”
“When?”
“Like six months before he died.”
“Why?”
“He said she was putting me in the middle.”
“In the middle of what?”
“Money stuff.”
He shrugged.
“I thought he was being dramatic.”
“Your father was dramatic.”
“Yeah.”
“He once refused to speak to the cable company for a month because they charged him twelve dollars.”
“That sounds right.”
“He made me call.”
Lucas smiled again.
Then it vanished.
“He also changed the garage code.”
I stared at him.
“When?”
“Around the same time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“What did he say?”
“That Grandma kept letting herself in.”
My skin prickled.
“Did she have a key?”
“She did before.”
“Before what?”
“Before he changed the locks.”
I sat back on my heels.
“When did he change the locks?”
Lucas thought.
“Maybe seven months before he died.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lot of things you didn’t think mattered.”
He flinched.
I regretted it immediately.
“That came out wrong.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Yes, it did.”
He stood.
“I was a kid.”
“I know.”
“I was supposed to notice all this?”
“No.”
“You’re looking at me like I missed something.”
“I’m looking at everything like I missed something.”
That stopped him.
I put the first-aid supplies back in the box.
“I trusted her.”
Lucas looked toward the doorway.
“So did Dad, once.”
That was worse somehow.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Detective Reyes asked us to come to the station the next morning at nine.
She wanted separate formal interviews.
I showed Lucas.
“Separate?”
he said.
“That’s normal.”
“How do you know?”
“I watch television.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It’s all I have.”
Beth called from downstairs.
“Coffee?”
“It’s eight at night.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Lucas called back, “Yes.”
I stared at him.
“I’m nineteen.”
“You’ve used that excuse three times today.”
“It remains true.”
We went downstairs.
Beth had made coffee strong enough to qualify as an industrial solvent.
I drank some anyway.
The house felt wrong with police having walked through it.
Every room seemed newly observable.
The basket of unfolded laundry.
Lily’s crayons on the breakfast bar.
Mark’s old baseball cap on the hook near the mudroom.
Evidence did not care whether a house was ready to be looked at.
At eight thirty, the doorbell rang again.
I froze.
Beth looked through the peephole.
“It’s Marjorie.”
Lucas stood.
“I don’t want her here.”
“Why?”
“She covered for Grandma.”
“She talked to Reyes.”
“After Lily died.”
“Lucas.”
He turned away.
I opened the door.
Marjorie stood on the porch clutching a casserole dish.
May you like
For one second I almost laughed.
Of all the things to bring into a possible murder investigation, tuna casserole felt aggressively normal.
