“I’m not coming back, Paul, so don’t worry about it,” Lily said, and she explained about her dad’s collapse. “I want to get him in to see a doctor if I can talk him into it.”
She was glad when Paul didn’t argue. “I should go,” she said. “I’ve left Erik with Dad, and he probably needs to get back to work.”
“The cops seem to think Erik is covering for AJ. You get any sense of that?” Paul asked.
“No,” Lily said. “He’s as clueless and worried sick as we are.”
Erik had made sandwiches while she was talking to Paul, ham and swiss on rye. He was setting the plates on the table when Lily returned to the kitchen. She poured glasses of iced tea, brought them to the table and sat down.
“I don’t need all this fussing,” her dad said.
“Becca was pregnant,” Lily said.
“The hell?” Her dad stared at her.
“No way.” Erik sat back, wide-eyed, stunned. “It was AJ’s?”
Lily went through it again, all that Dru had told her.
“You realize that makes it a double homicide,” her dad said.
She set down the sandwich half she’d picked up. She hadn’t thought of that. What kind of monster would murder the woman who was carrying his child? Scott Peterson. His name surfaced in Lily’s mind. Thanks to the extreme media focus following his arrest and trial for the murder of his wife and unborn child, even all these years later, she could recall his face, the eerie look of bland unconcern he’d turned to the cameras. Casey Anthony had had the same empty-eyed look after being charged with murdering her small daughter. They were psychopaths, according to the experts. Narcissists. While they could be quite charming, dangerously so, they had no real capacity to feel—anything. Compassion. Remorse. Real love. Not even true anger. And the numbers of such people—the ones who lacked humanity—were growing. Reaching epidemic proportions. If you believed the experts, one in twenty-five children born today was a socio-or psychopath. Was it true? Or merely media hype?
Hadn’t Casey Anthony’s mother turned her in?
Would she turn AJ in if she knew—knew, irrevocably—he was a murderer? Lily’s heart faltered.
“Does Shea know?”
She looked at Erik. “Dru said she was planning to tell her.”
“It’ll kill her.” Erik took his plate to the sink.
“I’ve seen how he looks at her.”
Lily met her dad’s glance. His color had improved; he seemed steadier since he’d eaten, and his hands were no longer shaking.
“AJ adores that girl,” he said. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.” Her dad wiped his mouth with his napkin. “The DNA—whoever it belongs to, the father of that baby—that’s your killer, and it’s not AJ.”
Erik came back to the table, standing behind his chair, leaning on the top rail.
Her dad looked up at him. “He say anything to you about taking up with Becca again?”
Erik shook his head. “But, you know, he’s different since he got back.”
“Different how?” Lily’s dad was testy.
“He’s closed up, moody. If I ask too many questions, he chews my head off. It’s like he’s wound too tight.”
“Dru thinks he’s had a breakdown.”
The men looked at Lily.
“I get the impression she doesn’t like him,” her dad said.
“She doesn’t,” Lily said. “If she could, she’d stop him from marrying Shea.” Lily turned to Erik. “You know Dru. Has she ever talked about AJ to you?”
“She knows better.”
Lily tucked her napkin beside her plate. “I don’t think she’s aware AJ was arrested before. If she’s thinking badly of him now, wait until she finds out about that.”
“That was a long time ago,” Erik said. “The guy got a medal since then for his service in the war. He’s a hero.”
“I don’t think she cares about his military service.”
“She’s an idiot,” Lily’s dad muttered.
“I don’t think so.” Lily shrugged when her dad shot her a look. It had cost Dru, telling Lily about her experience with her ex-husband. As much as Lily might want to believe otherwise, Dru hadn’t confided in her out of meanness, or a wish to cause more anguish. Although Lily was more afraid for AJ after hearing about Dru’s ordeal with her ex-husband. When she’d described how he’d looked and acted, his empty eyes, his lack of recognition of Dru or his surroundings—it was too eerily similar to the way AJ had looked in the restaurant. And now Erik was saying AJ was different since he’d come home from Afghanistan—Lily didn’t want to, but she knew what he meant. It raised the fine hairs on her head.
She knew AJ was struggling. She knew, too, how quickly you could lose yourself. How in a matter of seconds, you could act in ways—horrible ways—you’d never imagined. Lily found her dad’s glance. Did he not remember how it had been with her in the wake of her mother’s death, the sudden eruptions of temper, the chaos of her emotions? Could her state of mind have been what put her on the back of Jesse’s motorcycle that long-ago night?
Her dad went to lie down, and Lily walked Erik to his car. “I’m worried about Dad.”
“Yeah, that was scary, when he went down. Big, tough man like that. I never thought—” He looked off. “Guys like Jeb Axel—they’re invincible. Superheroes, you know?”
Lily said it was true.
“He’s pissed at me, but I’m not too happy with him right now, either.”
“He’s just disappointed, Erik. It’s been hard on him, selling off the herd, shutting down the xL. I understand why you didn’t want to come on as foreman,” she said, although she didn’t. “You need to be your own man, do your own thing. But I think Dad was kind of counting on one of you—AJ or you—”
“But he never offered the foreman job to AJ, did he?”
The question caught Lily off guard, and she was trying to sort it out—had her dad asked AJ?—when Erik, tipping back his head, groaned.
And apologized. “God! What is wrong with me? You’re worried sick—we all are—and I’m bitching about nothing.”
She put her hand on his arm. “It’s all right.”
“I’m going to see if I can get time off. I’ll come back. We’ll search every square inch of this ranch, all of Madrone County—all of fucking Texas if that’s what it takes. Sorry . . .”
“Don’t jeopardize your job, Erik.”
“AJ is my best friend; he’s my brother. You’re like a second mom to me. You guys are like family.”
“We are family, Erik. You know that.”
“Yeah.” Erik looked off. “I just wish AJ had talked to me.”
“Me, too,” Lily said.
“I know he didn’t do this. I know it.” Erik brought his gaze to Lily’s.
“No,” she agreed.
“I keep thinking he’s going to show up, you know? He’ll be at my apartment; he’ll call me—”
Lily’s throat closed at the hitch in Erik’s voice. “Tell me,” she said, quickly scooting them past the emotion, “how is Kate? You’re engaged, I heard.”
“Yeah, she finally said yes, last week.”
“Have you set a date for the wedding?”
“Not yet. I can’t even get the girl to go ring shopping. But it’ll be soon. Real soon. AJ’s going to be my best man, just like I’m his.”
“It’s wonderful.”