Eight
Reece
The officer who’d tracked me down to my brother’s house instructed me to drive straight back to my parents’ place. He’d be
following, in case I decided to be a wise guy and take a left when he took a right.
“McCabe is some pissed with you,” he said as I came out of Holden’s house and headed for my car. I had a sense she might be
just as pissed with him, since he was the one who’d moved his car, allowing me to get mine out of the driveway and leave the
scene. “Don’t do anything stupid like trying to lose me on the way back.”
I had no wish to be part of a police pursuit and told him not to worry. The one who was most relieved was Holden, who’d clearly
feared this cop was going to come inside the house and find more of what he’d brushed off that coffee table. At the same time,
he was puzzled the police were here for me.
“What’d you do?” he asked. “You’re the good son. You probably don’t even have unpaid parking tickets.”
I could understand his confusion. I hadn’t even had a chance to tell him our father was dead. There was no way I could break
it to him now and then just leave.
“I’ll be back later,” I told him. “Okay? You gonna be here? You working today?”
“I’ll double-check my calendar, but I don’t believe I have any pressing engagements,” he said as I headed out the door.
McCabe was waiting for me outside my parents’ house when I returned. After reaming me out for leaving, she asked, “Do you know a Leah Kennard?”
“No,” I said.
She showed me a driver’s license in Kennard’s name, with her picture on it. “Recognize her?”
I took a close look without touching it. “No,” I said again. “If I’ve ever seen her before or met her, I don’t remember.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“She called you?”
I nodded. “After you and I talked, my cell rang, it was her, saying she’d been trying to reach my father. Wanted me to come
by the house, see if everything was okay. Told her I was already here.”
“What else did you tell her?”
I tried to recall our conversation, what I’d said exactly. So much had happened in the last couple of hours that I was feeling
overwhelmed.
“I said . . . I didn’t tell her Dad was actually dead, but when she asked me point-blank, I didn’t answer, so I think she’s
figured it out.”
“You went to pick her up.”
“At Benjamin’s.” McCabe nodded. Everyone knew Benjamin’s. “But she didn’t wait. I thought she’d come back here, but you hadn’t
seen her, so I went to my brother’s, but she hadn’t gone there either.”
“You’ve called her since?”
“Couple of times.”
“So where do you think she is now?”
“I have no idea. I’m guessing she’s in shock. She knows something bad’s happened and the longer she puts off coming back here,
the longer she doesn’t have to know how bad.”
McCabe couldn’t send her minions out to find her the way she’d had them find me, unless they had some way to track her location
from her cell phone. Mom didn’t drive so there was no car to hunt down. While McCabe figured out what to do about that, she
pursued a different line of questioning.
“Did you know your father was having an affair?”
“I don’t know that he was.” She gave me a look she might give a three-year-old. Without saying a word, she was asking if I
had some other explanation for the scene upstairs. “Okay, I get how it looks and I can’t think of any explanation other than . . .
my dad was seeing someone else.” In the world of euphemisms, I am willing to admit that “seeing” was pretty lame.
“No inkling? Nothing?”
I shook my head. “Look, I’m still reeling, okay? I haven’t been given a chance to shed so much as a single tear yet because
you’ve got a job to do, and I get that, but I’m trying the best I can here. I didn’t know my father was seeing someone else,
I have no clue who that dead woman in bed with him is, and if you’d told me a week ago that he was cheating on my mom I would
have—”
I stopped myself short.
“Would have what?” McCabe asked.
I found myself, in that moment, reassessing everything I had thought to be true. Slowly, I said, “I would have thought that
maybe it was possible.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because . . .” I was finding it hard to put into words. Not because I didn’t know what the words were, but because saying
them out loud made them real.
“Because I don’t know that they were ever really happy,” I said. “At least, not for as long as I can remember.” I shook my
head slowly. “I guess my dad was fooling around, must have felt like shit about it, shot this woman and then shot himself.
I’ve got to find a way to live with that. To help my mother live with that. To explain that to my son, who adored his grandfather, who looked up to him, who saw him as a role model.”
“He left a note,” McCabe said.
“He what?”
“Your father left a note. On the bedside table, under his phone. Written on personal stationery, a notepad with his name across
the top.”
She took out her phone, showed me a photo she’d taken of the note. It read: I am so sorry for the hurt I have caused. I did this. I bear all responsibility. Brent.
I was a tire that had just run over a nail. Slowly deflating, the life slipping out of me.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“Is that your father’s handwriting?” McCabe asked.
My eyes were getting misty and I had to blink several times to be able to bring the photo on her phone into focus. “Can you
make it bigger?”
McCabe used two fingers to magnify the image.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s his handwriting. I’m sure of it.”
McCabe exited her photos app and put the phone away. “You mentioned a brother,” she said.
“Holden. Older than me. By a year.”
“Any other siblings?” she asked.
“No.”
She had her notepad in hand. “Give me your mother’s cell number.”
I complied.
“If she doesn’t turn up here soon, and you find her before I do, let me know immediately,” she said. “What occurred here might
seem straightforward, but I’ll still need to speak with her. We’ll be looking into Leah Kennard’s death as a homicide and
I’d like to find out what your mother can tell us about her.”
Dad died a murderer. We could put something on his headstone. Loving father, indifferent husband, mistress killer.
“If I hear from her, I’ll tell her to get in touch,” I said.
McCabe nodded solemnly. “You can go,” she said.
This time, I followed orders. I headed for home, still in a daze from the events of the morning. Before I got there, Diana
called me.
“Gage hasn’t come back,” she said.