Page 145 of Nobody's Fool

“I was trying to save her life,” he says. “Talia was in such pain. I was trying to end it for her.”

“By lying?”

“We all live a lie, Kierce.”

“Oh, please don’t hand me that bullshit.”

“It worked,” Archie says again. “Don’t you see? You can call it whatever you want, but it eased her pain. Talia was happy again. We all were. Even Anna. You told me so yourself.” He gestures toward his son. “Tell him, Kierce. Tell Thomas what she made you promise before she died.”

I look at him. “She wanted me to protect you.”

“Our feelings were not a lie,” Archie says. “They were reality.”

“So where did it go wrong?” I ask. “You are all living in this fantasy world for thirteen years. What happened?”

Thomas takes that one. “You, Kierce.”

“Me?”

“She recognized you in the news,” Archie says. “All those articles about your fall from grace. It unnerved her. You’d been fired. Disgraced. She felt responsible. She said it was the same way Talia had been tortured by not knowing—you were suffering the same thing. She wanted to make it right.”

This fit in with what Anna told me in the park. “So she came to my class,” I say.

“Yes. She thought that would have been the end of it, I think. None of us counted on you being resourceful enough to track her down. And once you showed up, I knew you’d never let it go. You’d keep digging.”

“So you decided to, what, control the situation?”

“As much as I could, yes,” Archie says. “That’s what I do. For the best of reasons. Let’s face it. I was right, wasn’t I? You’d have never let it go.”

Probably true, I think.

“At least by hiring you, I had some leverage and protection. The NDA. The money. You’d have to tell me all your findings. Like right now. Whatever else you might think this is, this is you doing your job. I hired you to investigate. Now you are simply reporting your findings per your employment contract.”

“Wow, that’s some spin.”

No reply.

“That only leaves us with one question,” I say.

I wait. They wait.

We are at it now.

I’ve been intentionally circling because I didn’t want them to shut down too early. Like I said, there are a lot of avenues to the truth. I just had to be careful not to force my way through barriers. But now, to keep within this piss-poor metaphor, we are on the final road and there is still a big roadblock ahead and sadly, I have no choice.

I have to ram through it, consequences be damned.

I know it. And they know it. Thomas closes his eyes and tightens his fists, as though bracing for the blow. So I lower the boom.

“What happened to Victoria?”

Their heads drop. Like father, like son. Their eyes stay on the floor. I will have to do the talking here.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Silence.

“She died that night. On January 1, 2000.”