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“Do I look like a killer to you?”
He doesn’t. Then again, neither does Virginia. Yet he’s as guilty as she is. The only difference between them is that she’s now harmless.
Carter, however, isn’t.
I shoot a glance up the street, weighing my options. My father’s house sits on the next block. I can see the warm glow of the porch light, beckoning me home. I can make a run for it and hope Carter doesn’t catch up, or I can force him out of the Escort and speed the rest of the way home. I pick plan B. Being inside the car seems like the safest bet.
I shove my right hand into my pocket, fumbling for the corkscrew. I pull it out and hold it up, its pointed tip aimed at Carter’s side. He sees it and raises his hands.
“Jesus, Kit. There’s no need for this.”
“Get out of the car,” I say.
Keeping his hands where I can see them, Carter unfastens his seat belt and pulls the handle of the passenger door. It clicks open, setting off a warning beep because the car’s still running.
“You’re making a mistake,” he says. “I swear to you I didn’t do it.”
“I don’t believe you!”
Anger courses through me, making my blood pump so hard I can feel the cut on my hand pulse. He lied to me. Just like Virginia lied to me. The pain of their twin betrayals stings like a third-degree burn. I jab the air with the corkscrew, forcing Carter closer to the open door.
“Kit, please!”
I jab the corkscrew again, this time lunging forward until its tip is a breath away from Carter’s neck. He scrambles out of the car and stands in the street, calling to me as I speed away, the passenger door flapping like a broken wing.
Knowing Carter can still easily catch up to me, I aim not for the driveway but the yard, thumping over the sidewalk and skidding to astop mere feet from the front door. I burst from the car, Carter’s loud and fast footfalls echoing up the street behind me.
“Kit, wait!” he calls.
I do the opposite, running to the front door, flinging it open, slamming it shut behind me. Carter reaches it just as I turn the deadbolt. He pounds on the door, pleading with me.
“Kit, please! You’ve got it all wrong.”
I back away from the door, unsure what to do next. I need a phone to call Detective Vick, peroxide and a Band-Aid for my hand, and to find my father, so I can finally reveal the truth about my mother’s death.
I head to the living room, expecting to find my father in his La-Z-Boy, waiting up for me like he did when I was a teenager. Only his chair is empty. As is the living room. And, it seems, the whole house.
“Dad?”
I move down the hall, to the bedroom he once shared with my mother but now sleeps in alone. Peeking through the doorway, I spot a suitcase on the bed.
One that doesn’t belong to him.
It’s smaller than his battered suitcase, which I remember from so many family vacations. Nicer, too. Quality leather as dark as brandy. Its single flaw is a broken handle, which dangles from the suitcase, held on at only one end.
My vision narrows, darkness pushing in from all sides until it looks like I’m staring down a train tunnel. But there’s no light at the end of it. Only confusion as I zero in on the suitcase’s lid. My hand shakes so hard I can barely lift it open.
When I do, I see a test tube with blood inside it and a stack of typewritten pages. I scan the first line of the top one.
The thing I remember most--the thing I still have nightmares about--is when it was all but over.
A sob croaks out of me. I can’t hear it because my pounding heart is loud in my ears. A shock. I’m so heartbroken I’m surprised it can even beat at all.
Because I know what my father did to get this suitcase.
And I know why.
All my life I’d only heard him referred to as Pat.