“I’m saying anything is possible and we have an entire list of suspects to consider.” She tweaks the corner of the photos with her thumb as if they were playing cards. Her gaunt frame turns toward my husband.
“James.” She blinks a dry smile. “Let’s move on to you.”
8
James
Marilyn McCafferty sits at the head of the table, bitter, yet drunk with revenge. I’m not sure what I’ve ever done to this battleax, but I can tell by that gleam in her beady little eyes that she’s about to knife my balls off so fast I will never see it coming. For a moment I envision her hunched over a pentagram, the leader of a black mass—worshiping trees in her birthday suit, her arms flailing to the sky as she decries her hatred for men.
“I need some water.” Allison springs to her feet. “Can I get anything for the two of you?”
Both McCafferty and I offer a silent refusal.
I wait until Ally is deep in the kitchen before leaning in. “I’m working on my marriage.”
Allison comes back with a water bottle in hand before I can finish my thought. But McCafferty doesn’t look amused by my efforts. Instead, it looks as if I’ve only managed to piss her off that much more.
Allison gives me a quick wink. “So let’s see what cobwebs lurk in the attic of your past, shall we?”
She’s awfully glib. I can’t believe she didn’t mention the fact some chick from high school has been hanging around. You would think she would mention something like that. I’ll have to pick her brain later. See if this girl is off her rocker. See if her kid can pass for Ota. Leave no stone unturned. I frown at McCafferty because a part of me is afraid she’s about to land a boulder on my chest.
“Are you certain that Reagan is your biological daughter?”
Allison jerks, kicking me from under the table without meaning to. “What?” She slaps her hand down over the stack of pictures patiently waiting for their moment in the spotlight. “Listen, I’m about to ask you to leave our home.” Her face is red with rage. “This is insulting and completely unnecessary.”
“Yes,” I assure them both. “Reagan is one hundred percent my child.” Allison settles down a bit, just enough to take a deep breath. “Look, this is the kind of speculation we don’t need right now. All those morons camping out on my lawn, chanting bullshit until the wee hours of the night, would love to feast off something like this. Reagan is mine. End of debate. You can take all the DNA samples you want once you bring my baby girl back alive.”
Allison gives a frenetic nod of agreement, her eyes set wide as an open sky.
McCafferty places her fingers onto the next photo in her surprise lineup of horrors. “The only reason I ask is because we located a few of your fraternity brothers. One of them mentioned a lengthy breakup ensued just before the two of you announced you would be parents.”
“That’s true.” Allison takes in a quivering breath. “Suffice it to say we were ecstatic to get back together. I’m fertile.”
That’s not entirely true. Ally and I have had a few slipups. Not once did she get pregnant. And then there were the intentional slipups on my part, and again it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t meant to be. Yet. Once Reagan comes home, I want to get to the serious business of expanding our family. I want more daughters, and yes, I would like to have a son. I think that would be wonderful. I want the whole package with Allison. For as many mistakes as I’ve made, I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
“Do either of you know who this man is?”
Allison gasps before McCafferty turns the picture over, but once I see my brother’s smiling face it’s me gasping.
“Aston.” I crane my neck a bit. “It was accidental—his death.”
“I know.” McCafferty flips the next one over, and we find Wilson smiling back at me. “Your other brother.”
“Yes, Wilson. He was a good guy. He OD’d on opiates or something. I was just a kid. I’ve never plied my parents for the details.” The fact he died was all I needed to know at the time. It’s still too much for me to take in.
“He didn’t die of opiates.” She cleans her eye teeth with her tongue. I steal a moment to glance at the door. For once I’m glad my father is taking his scheduled walk of the day. If he couldn’t handle it in the privacy of his own home, he certainly couldn’t tolerate the casket tossing going on in my dining room. “There was another chemical found in his bloodstream.”
“What was that?” Who knew what shit he was on. Toward the end, half the time he didn’t know what state he was in.
“Ethylene glycol. A chemical found in antifreeze. It’s hard to detect.”
“Antifreeze.” I shake my head at Allison. “Sounds like he got ahold of some bad stuff.”
“Sounds like it,” Allison is quick to agree with me, but too quick, and it unnerves me. The last thing I want is for McCafferty to think we’re covering for one another.
She flips the next picture over, exposing a younger, far less affable version of my father—not that any version of him is affable. But this particular one screams asshole even to the kindest, soft-footed woman. There’s not a person on the planet who wouldn’t want to give him the finger in his younger years. He was tough and he had to be.
“That’s my father. Looking good, right?” I glance to Ally and we share a quick smile. When Allison first met Pops, she said if she were older my mother would have to watch out. It was in jest, and something I appreciated at the time since I’ve gone through life wearing his face.
“Handsome devil.” McCafferty gives the photo a slight wink and both Ally and I share a smirk. “Rumor has it, he was a hard man.”
“Still is,” I offer. “He’s been—”
“Staying with you.” She sniffs at the idea. “Yes, I do know that. How do you feel about your father, James? Would you say you have a good relationship with him?”
“Excellent. Better than ever.”
“And your mother?”
“She passed about a year and a half ago.” Something deep in my chest unhinges and I resist the urge to bawl. “She was the best. I miss her like crazy.”
“Sounds like she meant the world to you.”
“Doesn’t every mother?”
“Not every mother.” She shoots a quick look to Ally. “How did your father feel about his children?”
“He was tough. He needed his kids to be perfect. He ran the courthouse. How would it look if his kids were running around wild? Small town.” Wilson was running around wild.
The past comes flooding back and I bite down over my lip so hard I taste blood.
McCafferty flips the next picture. Rachel standing in front of a batch of brownies. Home ec yearbook picture. I recognize it because the editor of the yearbook gave us a blowup print to display at the funeral. She looks happy. Whole.
“Is that your sister?” Allison pulls it over and admires her with a saturated smile. I would like to think that Allison and Rachel would have been very good friends. It’s a recurring fantasy I have—all my siblings alive, the entire lot of us enjoying long and joyful Sunday dinners. We could have been something great. Great indeed.
“And this one.” McCafferty flips another one over, the remaining pile growing markedly thin.
“That’s Mom.” God, I miss her. I give a wistful twist of the neck. There she is in all her redheaded Irish glory. “Rich in a dress.” Both Allison and McCafferty share a quiet chuckle.
“She was killed tragically.” McCafferty is fishing. But for what?
“It’s no secret how my mother died. Bad transmission meets railroad tracks. It was unfortunate.” That letter I found comes back to me and my stomach grinds.
“Yes.” She picks up my mother’s picture and hands it to Allison. “It’s unfortunate your father had the car impounded. Had it crushed down to a tin can that very afternoon.” She pumps her brows.
A self-righteous anger percolates through me on behalf of my father. He may not have been perfect, but he was damn near close. “What in the hell are you suggesting?”
McCafferty’s lips twitch as if she were getting off on my annoyance. “I’m suggesting we move on.”
She flips the next and final picture over.