A Matter of Trust

Chapter 30





Mia couldn’t get Riester’s terrible story out of her head. Like she needed anything else to feel bad about, anyone else to fret over.

At least after today, Mia wouldn’t have to worry about how to make the Suburban’s payments. And that was a good thing, she told herself as she sat at the car dealership, signing again and again each time the notary pointed.

Sitting next to her was Craig Silverman, the man who had seen her listing on the website that paired up people who needed to get out of a lease with people who were willing to take over the car and payments. Under his bristling mustache Craig had a wide, white smile.

And he should be smiling. He was getting a good deal. Mia had just seen the paperwork Scott had originally signed, and he had paid a hefty deposit for the Suburban. That money was gone now.

Mia signed her name one last time. Craig smiled even more broadly and shook her hand. Then she handed over the two sets of car keys and fobs.

Blinking back tears, she walked out to the dealer’s parking lot where her dad was waiting in the waning afternoon sunlight. She opened the door and climbed in without speaking.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Mia managed a nod. They drove in silence for five minutes. Then Mia let out a shaky sigh.

“You okay?” Her dad shot her a concerned look. He didn’t know how bad things were, but she thought he was beginning to guess.

“It’s been a tough week. And tomorrow’s going to be a long day. I’ve got two funerals to go to.”

“Two? One must be for your friend Colleen, but who’s the other one for?”

“Darin Dane. A boy who committed suicide after being harassed in high school.”

Her dad’s eyes widened. “Oh no. Is he a friend of Gabe’s?”

“No, thank goodness. They’re the same age, but they go to different schools. We’re investigating Darin’s death to see if we can charge the bullies with something.”

He nodded. “What are Brooke and Gabe doing while you’re at the funerals?”

“I’m taking them to Colleen’s funeral, since they both knew her pretty well.” Mia hadn’t told her dad about how she had asked Gabe to listen to what turned out to be Colleen’s last breaths. “And I’ll have Gabe watch Brooke while I’m at Darin’s funeral in the morning and then during Colleen’s wake.”

“Why don’t you let me do that? In fact, I can watch Brooke all day. She’s really too young to understand a funeral.”

Was he judging her? “She’ll be fine. And Gabe can watch her before and after.”

“I want to do it. And I know it’s really none of my business, Mia, but sometimes I think that since Scott died you’ve been too hard on the boy.”

And what did her dad know about being a single parent? When he left their mom, he had also left her and Peter.

“The truth is, Dad, I was too easy on him before. Scott and I were both too easy. Gabe basically didn’t have any responsibilities. If he left his homework at home, he knew I would drop it off at the school. I never asked him to help cook or clean. The only chore we consistently said he was responsible for was putting out the garbage and the recycling. And half the time I was the one who ended up taking it out to the curb. But Gabe’s fourteen now. He’s got to learn responsibility sometime.”

At least Mia hoped he was getting better about taking responsibility. Sometimes it seemed like Gabe was just getting better at whining. At being resentful. At being secretive.

“Lately he’s got this idea that he needs to be bigger,” she said. “I think it’s from football. He says he wants muscles.” She thought of Darin, of how the other kids had picked on him. At fourteen, maybe the only important thing in your life was to fit in. “When I came home on Wednesday, he and some friends from the team had been lifting Scott’s weights in the basement. That and basically eating anything that wasn’t nailed down. But when I came in, one of those guys stood up, shook my hand, looked me straight in the eye, and asked me about my job.” She exhaled sharply. “I have a feeling that if Gabe met some adult he didn’t know, he would just stand there all slouched with his hair hanging in his eyes and barely rouse himself to say hi.”

“You never know,” her dad said. “Your kids are sometimes different with other people than they are with you.” He took a deep breath, and she saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I know I wasn’t that good of a dad when you were growing up, but now I want to be around more for you, Mia.”

The admission must have cost him. The dad she knew—or used to know—hadn’t needed anyone, but now he seemed to need her. But this wasn’t what she needed, her dad wanting more of her time. Not now, when she barely had time to turn around. When Mia was twelve she would have given anything to hang out with her dad. Instead she had gone weeks, even months, without seeing him.

Why did you always get what you wanted, only far too late for it to do you any good?

When she didn’t say anything, her dad continued, “What I mean is, I want to help you. I know I can’t make up for not having been much of a father to you, but I can do a better job at being a grandparent. Let me help out with the kids more. Or do more around the house and yard. Things Scott probably did.”

Had her dad really changed? Or was he just getting older, feeling frail, feeling regrets? If he hadn’t been pushed out of his old job, would he be talking like this?

“You worked hard all your life, Dad. You deserve to take it easy.”

“Frankly, I’m bored.” He shifted in his seat. “I’ve been thinking about taking a mission trip with my church down to Guatemala. They’re going to build a school.”

A mission trip? Dad? Now Mia really had walked through the fun-house mirror.

Somehow it seemed easier to talk to him when they were both staring at the black pavement and the cars in front of and around them. When he signaled a lane change, they turned together to check the blind spot.

Mia found herself asking, “So why did you and Mom get a divorce anyway?”

He was silent for a minute. “Looking back, it’s hard to say. One thing is that we grew apart. It was my fault, I can see that now. I let it happen. I didn’t like to talk about work when I was at home, and I was always at work, so what was there left to talk about?”

In his words Mia heard an echo of her relationship with Scott.

“I don’t think you knew this, but things were hard with Scott before he died. I always said I would never get a divorce. Never do to my kids what you guys did to Peter and me. But when Scott and I started growing apart, I didn’t know how to pull things back together. I thought if I acted like things were okay, then maybe they would be.” She sighed. “Since Scott died, I’ve realized there was a lot he wasn’t telling me. He would just drive off to his office space every day. I thought he was working, but he must have spent a lot of the time worrying. Maybe he didn’t want to burden me. Maybe he thought the way we had split things up meant he couldn’t ask for help. He died trying to carry everything himself. I let him down, Dad. I left him all alone.” Tears closed her throat.

He reached over and squeezed her knee. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, honey, it’s that we are all imperfect. We can’t change the past. We can say we’re sorry, we can try to make amends, we can know that God forgives us if we ask Him, but it’s really about what we can do now as we go forward.”

He put his hand back on the wheel. Mia had a sudden flashback to him teaching her to drive—“hands at ten and two”—one of the few ways he had been involved in her life after the divorce.

About the only other memories she had of her dad from her teenage years were of the few times when he’d had them for the weekend and had invariably wanted help with some fix-it project. Peter, who was two years older, usually managed to get invited to a friend’s house or otherwise get himself off the hook. Even though her dad always billed it as learning experience, Mia was usually reduced to being the mute helper: handing him the wrench, holding the light. She could almost hear his impatient voice in her head: “No, right there. Can’t you see where you need to point it? Oh, good grief, give it to me! It would be easier if I just did it myself. I don’t know why I even asked you for help!”

And suddenly she wondered if that was how she seemed to Gabe sometimes. Impatient. Critical.

“Just how bad are things, honey?” her dad said, interrupting her train of thought.

What could she say to him? That she was holding on by her fingernails? “Pretty bad, but I’m working on it.” It would be way too embarrassing to spell out just how bad, like owning up to eating two gallons of ice cream and an entire cake by yourself. Although in this case, Scott had bought the cake and ice cream, and she had only eaten part of it. “Scott’s business wasn’t doing well. But instead of telling me, he just started putting everything on credit. Now I’m going to have a hard time even paying the minimums.”

“Why’d he lease that big SUV, then?”

“When he got it, I think he thought things were turning around. He’d just landed this new client. Plus, he thought a big car would be safer for the kids. And he wanted to look successful. By the time his new client decided to file for bankruptcy, it must have been too late.”

“You know if I had any money I’d give it to you, honey.”

“Yeah, Dad, I know.” She could imagine how Peter would react if their dad actually had any to give her. But it was a moot question. “We’ll make it. We’ll be okay. I’m just glad Frank D’Amato took me back at King County and I still have that gig as an adjunct professor.”

“How are things going in catching whoever killed Colleen and that Stan guy?” her dad said as he turned onto the street where Brooke’s preschool was.

“We’ve got more than enough suspects, but no one that’s a slam dunk. Frank’s been appealing to the public for help. The problem is, I don’t think the public knows anything. Whoever did this is not going around running their mouth about it. These killings were planned. But what the police are getting are folks calling about their dreams or saying it’s probably the neighbor they’re having a beef with.”

He parked and she went in to get Brooke. After Mia came back and buckled Brooke into the car seat in the back, she got into the front passenger seat and briefly rested her head on her dad’s shoulder. When was the last time she had done that? Had she ever?

They made one more stop before going home, at Pagliacci’s for pizza to go. That made two times in one week. Mia promised herself that soon she would start planning and shopping for real meals. But tonight they had to hurry so they could make Gabe’s game. She was back to life in the fast lane as soon as she walked in the door—trying to pick up the house, sort through the mail, check the answering machine and her personal e-mail. Her dad coaxed Brooke into eating some strawberries as well as nibbling on a slice of pizza. Mia poured her a glass of milk, then reached for one of the beers she had bought at the store a week earlier.

“Want a beer, Dad?”

“I’m not drinking anymore.”

Mia stood up too fast and hit her head on the ceiling of the refrigerator. She turned toward him. “Really?”

He drew an X on his chest with his index finger. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Mia thought of what she had found in the basement underneath Scott’s old ski clothes the night Colleen was killed. A bottle of whiskey. Scott had told her he had stopped drinking years ago. Well, just another thing that he hadn’t quite been truthful about. Or maybe it had been true when he said it and then it had become not so true.

And today her dad was claiming to be a changed man.

But tomorrow? Why, tomorrow he might go back to being the same old dad.