The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(15)

“Yeah. Okay.”

She watches him push himself out of the chair and shuffle out into the hall, hunched over as if he’s aged a couple of decades in as many days.

Beck sinks into the seat he vacated and buries her head in her hands, wishing her older brothers were here to help her deal with this.

But they finally returned to their respective homes to sleep last night, after spending both Sunday and Monday nights at the nearby hotel where the family was holed up while the house was off-limits as a crime scene investigation.

The police released it late yesterday.

The last thing any of them wanted to do was walk through the door into the house where Mom had been killed, but they knew they’d have to do it sooner or later. No one could spare the money for more nights in a hotel, and Dad didn’t want to leave town to come stay at one of their houses in the midst of all this.

So they came back here and did their best to clean up the disorder left in the wake of the investigation.

No one had opened the master bedroom door and gone in. A professional cleanup crew had been in there, and the man in charge came to the hotel to assure Dad—delicately—that the room was now “fine.” Dad just looked at him, and shook his head. For all he cared—for all any of them did—that door could stay closed for as long as the house remained in their possession.

Beck and her brothers have privately discussed the situation and agreed that Dad will have to sell it as soon as possible. It’s not what Mom would have wanted, but she had no way of knowing what would happen to her here.

Last night they sat glumly around the kitchen table, trying to make memorial service arrangements while choking down a meal prepared by a well-meaning neighbor. Neal and Teddy took turns taking repeated phone calls from their wives.

“You guys should go home tonight and be with your families,” Beck urged them afterward, as they all did the dishes. “I’ll stay here with Dad.”

She knew it was the right thing to say. Her brothers both have kids, and Teddy’s wife is pregnant. Unemployed, he had a promising job interview lined up for yesterday. Mom would have been so upset that he’d missed it. She worried about all of them, but lately, especially about Teddy, with a baby on the way and no medical benefits.

Beck’s brothers took her up on the offer to go home, promising to be back first thing this morning. Of course, they assumed that her husband, Keith, would remain here with her and Dad.

But he drove back home to Lexington not long after her brothers left, saying he needed to go check on the house, get the mail and papers, and should stop in at the office today to make sure things had been running smoothly in his two-day absence.

He’s on the research faculty at the university. One summer session just ended and the next is about to begin, but things are relatively quiet at this time of year. Beck works on campus herself, as a lab technician.

“You really don’t have go to check in at the office,” she told Keith. “They don’t expect you to do that in the middle of a family crisis. You can call in and check your e-mail from here. And the neighbors can keep grabbing our mail and newspapers and they’ll keep an eye on the house for a few more days.”

“It’s less than a hundred miles away. I’ll be back here tomorrow night.”

“Why leave at all?”

“Because I have to,” Keith said tightly.

“No. Because you want to.”

Dad, still sitting at the table with them, barely seemed aware of the discussion, and hopefully didn’t see the look Beck shot Keith when he pushed back his chair and ended the conversation with a curt, “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“Fine,” she said. “Go.”

She did get up and walk with him to the door, but only because her father might have noticed if she didn’t. The last thing she wants right now is to let him know that her marriage is in serious trouble and has been for months. Grief-stricken and devastated, facing life as a widower, Dad doesn’t need anything else to worry about.

Anyway, who knows? Maybe, when this is all behind them, she and Keith will manage to work things out.

Maybe he’ll have a change of heart or change his ways; or maybe she’s been wrong about him, about what he’s been up to behind her back . . .

But probably not.

Mom always liked to say, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck—

“Ms. Heywood?” Detective Burns, an attractive, middle-aged African-American woman, is standing in the doorway.

Technically, Beck is Mrs. Drover, not Ms. Heywood, but then . . . maybe not for much longer. Without bothering to correct the detective, she says, “Yes?”

“I just wanted to make sure you stick around. And you said your brothers are on their way back here now?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to need to talk to all of you again, too, after we speak to your father. And the rest of the family as well.”

Something in the woman’s tone makes Beck look more closely at her face. When they first met, on Sunday, she seemed much kinder, more sympathetic—although her memory is admittedly fuzzy.

That was such a terrible, terrifying time.

She was the one who’d called the police.

After talking to her father and then also trying unsuccessfully to reach her mother, she got into her car and drove through the rain up to Cincinnati, arriving at the house in the late afternoon. All was quiet. Mom’s car was in the driveway.