Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(105)

“Are you okay?” he asks me quietly. He wipes at the moisture on my cheeks.

“You’re the one who lost your town house.”

He shrugs. “I’m also the one with two vacation homes. Guess I’ll be working on the Cape for a bit. Or maybe Florida.”

I have to laugh. “Well, it doesn’t totally suck to be you,” I say. “As for me, I’ll check in on Mom. If she sees this on the news …”

Mr. Delaney immediately tenses. “Go. Keep her company. And, of course, limit the vodka.” He sighs. “Tell her everything is fine here. Just some property damage, nothing more. I’ll come by first chance I get.”

“Okay. I have a couple of errands I have to run first,” I hedge. “But I’ll call her, definitely. And if you get to the house before I do …”

Delaney looks at me funny. “What are you doing, Evie?”

“Nothing. Baby stuff. Just … maybe I don’t want go straight from this, to my mother and a bottle of vodka.”

Mr. Delaney thins his lips, looks like he’s about to argue. And he probably should, given that I’m lying through my teeth. But given all the lies that people have told me lately …

I wave goodbye. Then, before he has a chance to say anything more, I turn on my heels and head for my own little dance with danger.

—

THIS TIME KATARINA is clearly annoyed when I walk in. Not her office—for this conversation, we needed a less conspicuous location, hence a local coffee shop popular with Harvard students and jam-packed this close to finals. No one pays me any attention as I wedge my way through the door, then work my way to the back of the overheated, overpopulated space. Katrina is perched at a table in the rear corner. With her long black coat belted around her waist, she looks like a character out of a spy movie. Which makes me?

“I already told you,” she starts stiffly.

I hold up a silencing hand. “You already told me what you thought would make me go away. Now I want the real story. The one you and obviously Mr. Delaney know, but I don’t.”

She scowls. In my mind, I’ve already turned over our earlier conversation several times. In particular, the end, when Mr. Delaney leaned down to whisper something in her ear. Maybe it was paranoia, but it felt to me that all the adults in my life were keeping secrets. I didn’t want secrets anymore. I wanted the truth, even if it hurt.

So I’d called Katarina again. Except this time, I told her I’d make her and my father’s affair public knowledge, if she didn’t talk to me again. I understood academia. Whether Katarina had done something inappropriate or not, she still couldn’t withstand the whiff of impropriety. Especially given the re-opening of my father’s death, which would immediately shroud her in scandal.

“You didn’t kill my father.” My anger has made me bold. I like it.

She ceases scowling, appears more puzzled.

“You really didn’t care that the affair ended.”

I earn a single, Slavic shrug.

“What about him? Did he care?” This is what I’d started wondering about after talking to her. So what if the affair hadn’t been an issue for Katarina? That didn’t mean it hadn’t mattered to my father. Or my mother.

What was it Mr. Delaney, my parents’ closest friend and confidant, had told Katarina? What did he know that I didn’t?

“Your father had many affairs,” Katarina said at last. That shrug again. “It was common knowledge. He was not a man who felt a need to follow rules. A mind as great as his own …”

“Did he love you?”

Her expression is surprisingly candid. “Men will say anything to get a woman into bed. As to what they actually mean … The other woman is always the last to know, hey?”

I can’t decide what I think of her. “Do you think he would’ve left my mother for you?”

“No.”

This time her answer is immediate and firm.

“That didn’t bother you.”

“No.” Same tone.

“I don’t get it.”

She seems as genuinely confused by me as I am by her. “What is there to get? We met, there was a physical attraction. We scratched the itch. And the world moved on, as it always does. I am not a woman who wants forever. And your father was not the kind of man to leave his wife.”

“He loved her?”

For the first time, Katarina purses her lips, appears thoughtful. “I believe so. Their relationship was … different. But again, Earl was not one to live by traditional rules. Your mother suited him. For that matter, he loved you, as well.” Now she shrugs both shoulders. “A genius and a family man. They are not so easy to find.”

“But you didn’t want him.”

“I always knew he was already taken.”

“My mother.”

Katarina doesn’t answer as much as she regards me steadily. And in that look, I know what I was afraid to hear. The doubt that had been growing for hours now. My mom had been with me that day. But as Katarina said, my mother wasn’t one to do her own dirty work. My volatile, reckless, overdramatic mom …

“She knew about the affair,” I whisper. “You said my father told you as much. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”