Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(21)

Only I keep my distance.

Conrad tried to fix us. In the beginning, when he viewed my relationship with my mom as something salvageable. She’s such a lovely woman, he’d tell me time and time again. I’d nod, because my mom is a lovely woman. And charming and smart. Can’t argue with any of that.

She’s also a fucking wack job.

No one wants to hear that sort of thing, but my father got it. During her more trying times or dramatic tirades, he’d offer me a conspiratorial wink. I think, however, that her kind of crazy fit him.

My mother isn’t mean, at least not intentionally. She’s neither violent nor cruel. She’s just—herself. She sees what she sees, she knows what she knows, she believes what she believes, and nothing is going to change that. I think for my father, who lived in the land of the abstract, she was refreshingly tangible. You always knew exactly where you stood with her, which was mostly on the outside, looking in. She also worshipped my father’s brilliance, took genuine pride in being the wife of one of the greatest minds in mathematics. Last but not least, I heard some noises as a kid that—later, as an adult—I realized meant my parents had a very robust sex life.

Together, they worked.

Meaning our issues aren’t that my mother didn’t love my father. Or that that I didn’t love my father. It’s more like each of us, for various reasons, wanted him all to ourself.

My mother pulls into the drive. Same stately Colonial. Historic gray paint, black-painted shutters, white trim. My mother adheres to a strict maintenance schedule—her hair, her face, her home. I believe the exterior paint is on a five-year plan. Many wait seven to ten, she’d tell you. But why have three to five years of a tired-looking home, when it can appear clean and fresh always?

The front porch has a pair of whitewashed Adirondack chairs framing the huge solid black-painted door and leaded side windows. This time of year, the door is draped with a holiday garland of various greens and festive berries. Beside the Adirondacks sit enormous pots of spruce branches, white-frosted twigs, red bows, and pinecones.

Conrad and I hadn’t even gotten to a tree yet.

I feel that pang again. Will myself not to think of the stair bannister, the study, the smell. My husband. My father. Too much blood.

The story of my life: too much blood.

Now this.

My mother turns off her Lexus. Turns to me. And smiles.

—

I DID THE best I could without you,” she says as we walk into the house. “Of course, since you’re here, you can help with the final decisions. When will you find out the sex of the baby? Soon, right? I don’t remember exactly when they can tell you that sort of thing, but it seems with today’s technology, anything’s possible.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about, only half listening to her prattle as I enter the childhood home I’ve done my best to avoid for the past sixteen years.

Like many historic homes, the house doesn’t have a garage. My mother parks on the driveway; in the winter, some college student will get paid to shovel out and clear her vehicle. As family members, we use the side door off the kitchen. For the full effect, however, my mother prefers to greet even longtime friends at the front door, which better showcases the full impact of the home, including the huge oil portrait of our family. I was four when my mother had it commissioned. Too young to realize no one should ever be painted in a marshmallow-shaped white dress with a giant white bow in her hair. My mother is sitting in a wingback chair, which was custom-upholstered to be nearly the exact same shade of blue as her eyes. My father stands behind both us, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, smiling benevolently at the painter. He is wearing a gray tweed jacket over a dark green sweater-vest. His face is slightly rounded, his sandy beard perfectly trim. He looks kind and powerful and maybe just a tad bemused by the whole production.

When I was little, and my father worked late, I used to climb onto the wingback chair just to touch the portrait and my father’s curving smile.

I would whisper, “Love you, Papa,” then scramble down before anyone (my mother) caught me.

I don’t enter the sitting room, though the front parlor, across the way, is just as bad. The baby grand piano, where I used to sit and play for hours while my father relaxed on the settee across from it. The piles of music still sitting on the closed cover. The faint smell of wax and pipe smoke. In the corner sits the octagonal game table that would be dragged out for poker nights.

I imagine given my mother’s busy social life, it’s still in use, but I don’t like to think about it. In my mind, it’s my father’s table. My mother’s house, but my father’s table, my piano.

Then there’s the kitchen, where my father died.

My mother reaches for my coat, before remembering I don’t have one. She hangs up her own in the hall closet. She is still talking. I nod absently.

We pass my father’s study, neither one of us looking. I don’t have to peek inside to know the walls remain plastered in awards and honorary degrees, that his favorite pens are still scattered across the desktop, along with a yellow legal pad still scribbled with last-minute thoughts. For the first few years after his death, I could smell him every time I walked in. The whisper of his aftershave. Something expensive my mom imported from England just for him. Sandalwood, a hint of lemon, something else.

It used to be how I knew he’d come home. I’d catch a whiff of his aftershave floating through the house.