Chapter 82
“Right before I came to you on the bluff, Tristan was saying something . . . he was saying, ‘Please, my dad . . . my dad,’ something like that?”
Ivy’s hand was shaking when she tried to pick up her beer. Decided it wasn’t worth the risk of soaking the dress that Abby had loaned her and opted to leave it where it was.
“You said, ‘He’s not,’ and then I showed up. I thought a lot about that. About what you were about to say before I arrived. I think I finally figured it out.” Vaughn paused, then raised his eyes, leveled them directly at hers. “You were going to say, ‘He’s not dead.’”
The final sentence hung in the air.
Ivy hadn’t thought the detective was stupid, despite him pretending but clearly not understanding the prisoner games or the Riemann hypothesis. But she hadn’t thought that he was this smart, either. This good.
A photo, a rook, half a sentence. Deleted TA applications. That was all it took for this detective to blow apart a secret that Ivy had been keeping for three years.
“It was your dad who died in that fire, wasn’t it? Not Steve.”
Ivy started to cry.
“I think you kept this from everyone. Even your mom. Maybe you meant to tell her, maybe not. But when Steve woke up, even though he couldn’t speak, she knew.
That’s why she left, isn’t it, Ivy? Not because she couldn’t handle looking after her husband, but because she couldn’t handle looking after Steve.
” Another pregnant pause and then, “How much do you know about Broca’s area?
The part of Steve’s brain that was affected by the fire? ’
Ivy didn’t answer.
“Well, I didn’t know anything, so I asked the ME.
Here, this is what he said.” Vaughn was reading off his phone now.
“Broca’s area is critical for both spoken and written language.
In the image you sent me I see severe degeneration.
I asked him if it could recover and he said, no, the brain cannot regenerate.
He did say, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the brain has a certain degree of neuroplasticity.
Stupid me, I didn’t know what that meant either.
Apparently, other structures in the brain can rewire themselves so that healthy portions can take over for damaged regions.
That’s what you thought might happen, right?
You thought that, eventually, he might recover enough to tell you, or at least write, where he hid his laptop. ”
Ivy didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t say anything.
Vaughn steepeled his hands over his drink.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know what you went through that night or to understand why you did it.
I can’t possibly . . . seeing your father dead like that, making the decision to switch their identities.
You know Detective Howe? The one who worked your father’s case?
He almost figured it out. He said that your father started the fire and that he killed Steve.
He was right, just had the roles reversed.
Steve killed your dad, not the other way around. ”
Ivy’s fingertips, where she’d burned them removing Gene’s scalding wedding ring, were beyond aching now. It was as if they were on fire.
“Ivy, I only want to know one thing: how? How did you go this long looking after the man who murdered your dad?”
Vaughn had been speaking for more than half an hour now, during which Ivy hadn’t said a single word. She didn’t want to talk. Vaughn saying these things made it all the more real.
And it wasn’t real. It was a farce. A lie.
“I don’t know.” Ivy’s voice barely topped a whisper. Truth was, she didn’t think about it much.
At first, yeah—she’d spent hours thinking about how insane everything she’d done was.
How, if her blood oxygen saturation hadn’t dropped to 81 percent—a level the paramedic said was fatal to most—she wouldn’t have even considered it.
It would have never crossed her mind.
But Vaughn expected an answer. In some ways, he deserved one, too.
“I guess I just fell into a routine,” Ivy said softly. “When it became apparent that he was never going to regain his faculties, I could have told someone. But by then—”
“It was too late.”
Ivy nodded. Wiped tears from her eyes.
“I actually began thinking of him as my father. He didn’t speak, obviously.
So, I got comfortable talking to him about things.
After my mom left, my friend recommended her therapist. I was skeptical, but gave it a shot.
Didn’t mind it so much. The issue was that she was professionally obligated to speak.
I didn’t want someone to speak. You know, people don’t listen anymore.
They pretend to listen, but in their heads, they’re just working out what to say next.
That’s what my fath—I mean, Steve—is for me. Someone who just listens.”
Vaughn opened his mouth, but when he didn’t say anything, Ivy surprised herself by chuckling.
“See? You’re doing it now, aren’t you?”
“I’m not.”
“But you want to ask me something else?”
“I do.”
“Might as well spit out it.”
“Did you know?” Vaughn said flatly.
Ivy didn’t understand.
“Know what?”
“Did you know that Tristan was behind all these murders?”
“No,” Ivy said immediately. “I had no idea.”
Vaughn stared at Ivy. Probably tried to use his cop instincts or whatever to try and figure out if she was lying.
Ivy didn’t break her gaze, and Vaughn was the one who averted his eyes first.
Ivy drank. So did Vaughn. She still wasn’t hungry, so Ivy just picked at her food.
“What are you going to do, Vaughn?” The words just came out, unplanned.
The detective took his time before answering.
“Never liked gossip.”
Ivy finally felt her face relax.
Maybe relationships borne out of high-pressure situations could work after all.