Page 82 of Faded Gray Lines

“I could arrange to have yours repaired too, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, but I’m not sure that’s in the campaign manager job description.”

“Leighton, a lot of things I do aren’t in the job description.” Uncrossing her legs, she stood with the grace of a lion. “By the way, I believe you kept a scrapbook—old clippings of your father’s career. Do you still have it?”

“I suppose it’s at my mother’s house in my old room somewhere,” I said, beginning to question her sanity.

Nodding, she brushed her hair over her shoulder. If I hadn’t been watching, I would’ve missed the tremble in her hand. “You might want to take a look at them. Great man, your father. Such a shame what happened to him. A real shame.”

“Yes, he was.”

Making her way toward the door, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “You have his eyes, you know.” A sad smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “They tell the truth if you look long enough. I’ve always thought the eyes were the window to the soul.”

The familiar words slammed into me, and I felt like I was about to be sick.

“Look long enough into a man’s eyes and you’ll know his real intentions.The eyes are the window to the soul.”

They were words my father lived by. Words so meaningful to him I had them slipped into the pocket of his suit jacket before they closed the casket. I gripped the armrest until my knuckles cracked. How could my mother’s campaign manager know something so personal about him? My father was a friendly but intensely private man. His values and things that mattered most to him were only shared within a select group of people: his children, his wife, his parents, and people he loved and trusted.

Holy shit.

People he loved and trusted.

“Jackie, wait!” Scrambling to my feet, I ran after her, but she’d already disappeared down the hall. “Shit!” Slamming my fist against the doorframe, I raced past the reception area and tore out of the building.

With both my mother and Finn at work, there was no time like the present.

* * *

I took the stairs two steps at a time until I flung open the door to my old room. I didn’t have the time to be careful. Diving into my closet, I tore through mountains of old boxes until I came across the one I wanted. It was the size of a hat box, and when I ripped the top open, I didn’t allow myself the hysterical breakdown that usually accompanied looking at what remained of my father’s life.

No emotions. Not today.

Picture after picture, clipping after clipping, I scanned the words and forced myself to see my father’s smiling face. Nothing stood out as different. Nothing was out of place.

Jackie wasn’t trying to tell me something.

She hadn’t had some secret relationship with my father.

She was just a fucking lunatic.

Grabbing the lid to the box, I cursed under my breath and almost put it away when I saw it. It peeked out from beneath my father’s official promotion photo from cop to detective. Reaching in with a shaking hand, I pulled it out and time froze. Still, I didn’t cry. Maybe it was shock, but maybe, deep down a part of me always knew this moment would come.

The picture was worn, covered in countless salty tears, but the faces were still visible.

Hundreds of people had shown up for my father’s funeral, but only one person in the photograph standing next to his casket looked familiar.

The salt and pepper hair.

The deep dimpled chin.

Shoving the box back in the closet, I tucked the photo in my back pocket and left.

Twenty-Eight

Mateo

Slipping off my jacket,I draped it across a chair outside of the steel door. “Anyone see you come in?”