Confidential(31)

“How are you?” she inquired.

“Oh, you know . . . ,” I said vaguely. “Same old, same old. Still in Berkeley.”

“I love Berkeley.”

She told me that every time. I knew I should ask how she was, but she was capable of great and useless detail, and I just didn’t have the stomach for it. “Have you heard from my mom?”

Long pause. “No one has.”

“No one?”

“None of our shared friends, I should say. I think her energy must be going to Adam, which we all completely understand. Since she took a leave of absence—”

“Wait, what?”

“She’s off from work. I assume it was so she could devote herself full-time to caring for Adam.”

I smelled burning and hurried to turn off the flame. “When did she do that?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

So after she learned about Adam and me, she decided to freeze me out and leave her job to take care of him? I was her daughter. He was the guy who’d taken advantage of her daughter. Her child.

“Are you there?” Blythe said.

“I’m here.”

“Did something happen between you and your mom?”

“You could say that.”

“Do you want to talk about it? We’re only as sick as our secrets.”

It was a platitude I’d heard many times, Twelve Step speak. Mostly, I thought it was true. But I was already sharing my secrets (most of them, anyway) with a licensed professional. Blythe was well meaning, but she had no training, just a million meetings under her belt. Besides, she was Mom’s friend. Or at least, she used to be.

“Did something happen between you and my mom?” I said.

“Not that I know of. She just hasn’t been returning anyone’s calls or texts. It must be overwhelming, taking care of someone with cancer. Luckily, I’ve never had to experience it myself.”

“Yes,” I finally said, “it must be consuming.” Then I thanked her and told her my food was burning, that we’d talk soon.

I couldn’t take the smell, so I wrote a jolly “Help yourself!” note and affixed it to the counter. Then I ran upstairs to my room, hurling myself on the bed and crying into my pillow like a teenager.

Mom was standing by her man, even when that man had abused me, and she wouldn’t even give me so much as a text to ease my mind.

That meant that she was a truly terrible person, or I was.





PRESENT DAY





CHAPTER 24

DETECTIVE GREGORY PLATH

“Here,” I say, “have another Kleenex.” I slide the box closer to her across the table. Lucinda’s already gone through a dozen tissues, at least.

I started out sympathetic, but she’s trying my patience. I’ve got a job to do, and histrionics just slow me down. Besides, I’m not sure if the tears are real or just a ploy.

Have I become too jaded, or is that just my gut talking? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

I look down at my yellow legal pad to see where I want to go next, and she lets out a fresh sob. “Dr. Baylor used those,” she explains.

Give me strength.

“I feel like you don’t believe me,” she says.

“About what?”

“What I’ve been telling you. That I could never have killed him. I love him. Loved him.” More sobs.

“Do you think he loved you, too?”

“He must have. It’s the only explanation.” She dabbed at her eyes. If she pulled herself together, she could be a looker, though I’ve never liked women taller than me.

“The only explanation for what?”

Weeping conveniently overtakes her again. I try mightily to resist an eye roll.

It’s not that I’m hard-hearted. When I meet with grieving widows, or parents who’ve lost their kids, or, you know, people with legitimate reasons to break down, I feel for them. But in my humble opinion, Lucinda needed to shut off the waterworks.

Greer already told me Lucy’s story from dim sum, though I haven’t yet let on about that. I’m not planning to. I want to see if Lucinda is going to come clean.

Lucy. That’s what Greer called her, same as Flora. Was the nickname a sign they are all buddies, or coconspirators, or something else?

Greer confirmed that Flora was a woman scorned (no, excuse me, that Flora “claimed” to be a woman scorned). The fact that Greer didn’t want to believe that the good doc had been sleeping with Flora suggested that she herself was doing the deed, though, of course, Greer denied it vigorously.

And what about sweet little Lucy? What is she going to admit or deny?

I’ve got to handle her with kid gloves, that’s for sure. She’s fragile. Both Flora and Greer agreed about that, and they agreed about virtually nothing else.

“What I don’t understand,” I say gently, “is why you were at the dim sum brunch. Those other women, they hated him.”

“I probably shouldn’t have gone,” she finally says, after an extended nose blow. “I didn’t believe what they were saying. Those stories . . . that wasn’t the Michael I knew. He wouldn’t take advantage of anyone. Whatever they gave, they gave willingly. Like I did. You might have regrets, but you can’t take anything back.”