Chương 5
Rachel parked behind Vanessa’s SUV.
David’s truck was gone.
She knocked.
No answer.
She knocked again.
“Vanessa.”
The door opened.
Vanessa had changed from funeral clothes into gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. Her blonde hair was tied badly at the back of her neck. Without makeup she looked older, which for some reason made Rachel angrier.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know.”
“Did the detective tell you that?”
“Yes.”
Vanessa stared at her.
Rachel said, “So we have that out of the way.”
Vanessa stepped aside.
The living room looked as if a travel company had exploded inside it. Suitcases open. Resort brochures on the coffee table. A straw beach hat crushed beneath David’s duffel.
Rachel looked at the brown suitcase.
“Is that his?”
“Yes.”
“Did police search it?”
“They came this morning.”
“And?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
Rachel walked farther into the room.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I don’t.”
“Did he come home?”
“For twenty minutes.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“What did he take?”
Vanessa folded her arms.
“Clothes. Laptop. Some paperwork.”
“And you let him leave.”
“What was I supposed to do, tackle him?”
“You could’ve called the police.”
“I did.”
Rachel stopped.
Vanessa’s face hardened.
“You think I’m sitting here protecting him?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Neither do I.”
The answer sounded so much like Rachel’s own words at the church that it took some of the heat out of her.
Vanessa sat.
She pushed aside a resort magazine.
“Sit down.”
Rachel remained standing.
Vanessa shrugged.
“Fine.”
“What did he say about the coins?”
“He denied taking them.”
“The video?”
“Said it wasn’t him.”
“His trip home?”
Vanessa looked at the floor.
“He admitted that.”
Rachel waited.
“He said he came back because one of the business accounts was frozen and he needed documents your father had kept.”
“At my house.”
“That’s what he says.”
“Why would Dad’s business documents be in my safe?”
“I asked him that.”
“And?”
“He told me I was getting hysterical.”
Rachel blinked.
Vanessa gave a small, bitter laugh.
“I threw a lamp.”
That was not funny either.
Rachel almost smiled.
“Did you hit him?”
“No. I missed by a lot.”
Silence.
A lawn mower started somewhere outside.
The ordinary sound filled the room.
Vanessa picked at a loose thread on her sweatpants.
“I lied yesterday.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean before.”
Rachel looked at her.
“When you called me after Abby died, I told you David was asleep.”
Rachel’s body became very still.
“He wasn’t.”
“No.”
“Where was he?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew he had left Hawaii.”
“Yes.”
“And you lied.”
“Yes.”
Rachel walked to the window.
A woman across the street was unloading groceries from a minivan. Two boys were bouncing a basketball in a driveway.
“You listened to my voicemail.”
“Yes.”
“You heard me screaming that Abby was dead.”
Vanessa began to cry.
Rachel turned.
“And your first decision was to give David an alibi.”
“I didn’t know what had happened.”
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t have lied.”
“I know.”
“Did you?”
Vanessa wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand.
“He had called me before you did. He was upset. I asked where he was. He wouldn’t answer. Then your message came.”
“And?”
“I thought he’d gone to your house for the coins.”
“You keep saying thought.”
“Because that’s what it was.”
“You protected him anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Vanessa looked at her with something close to anger.
“Because I’ve been protecting him for eight years.”
That answer changed the room.
Rachel sat.
Vanessa looked away.
“The company has been in trouble for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Depends what you mean by trouble.”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking like there’s a version of this where the wording saves you.”
Vanessa pressed her lips together.
“Three years.”
Rachel stared.
“My brother has owned a profitable business for three years while secretly losing money?”
“It was profitable. Then it wasn’t. Then it was again. Then he borrowed to cover one bad quarter, and another. He kept saying the next contract would fix it.”
“How much?”
Vanessa looked toward the hallway.
“More than the coins.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know the final number.”
“Guess.”
“Four hundred thousand.”
Rachel felt almost nothing.
The number was too large.
“Debt?”
“Debt. Missing tax payments. Vendor bills. A line of credit I didn’t know existed.”
“And you went to Hawaii.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“The trip was paid for last year.”
“You could’ve stayed home.”
“Yes.”
“Instead you posted pictures from a resort while David’s business was collapsing.”
“I know how it looks.”
Rachel gave her a tired stare.
“Do you?”
Vanessa’s chin lifted.
There was the woman Rachel knew.
Proud even while breaking.
“I was trying to keep our life from becoming the only thing we talked about.”
Rachel almost snapped at her.
Then she thought of the casseroles at home.
Of the number of times she had opened Abby’s bedroom door just to look inside and then gone downstairs without accomplishing anything.
People did stupid things to avoid being trapped inside the worst fact of their lives.
“What did he borrow from you?”
“Everything I had.”
“You let him?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Vanessa did not answer.
Rachel looked at her wedding ring.
“Your jewelry.”
Vanessa’s eyes dropped.
“Some.”
“Did he pawn it?”
“I sold it.”
Rachel sat back.
“You helped him.”
“I thought I was helping us.”
A long silence followed.
Then Vanessa said, “Your father knew.”
Rachel frowned.
“Knew what?”
“That the company was weak.”
“He left it to David anyway.”
“He thought making David responsible for something would fix him.”
Rachel’s first instinct was to defend her father.
Then she remembered him.
Really remembered him.
Not the funeral portrait version.
The man who could love someone and still turn that love into a test they had never agreed to take.
“That sounds like Dad.”
Vanessa nodded.
May you like
“David thought the coins should have been his too.”
Rachel looked at her.
