Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(58)

“The cocktail parties. University functions. Build the legacy. Protect the legacy.”

Mr. Delaney smiles. “They fit together, Evie. Whether it made sense to outsiders or not, they were meant to be. And they both loved you.”

I return to the window. My father loved me. I know that. My mom, on the other hand, is a different story. A genius husband had fit the exotic storyline of her life. A slightly above-average-intelligence daughter who taught math at public high school, not so much so.

“You can talk to me,” Mr. Delaney is saying now. “You’re my client. Our conversations are protected by privilege. Whatever you say stays with me.”

“And not my mom?” I can’t help it; I sound bitter, maybe even petulant.

“Mum’s the word,” he says so quietly, I almost miss the pun. When I catch it, I smile, and he smiles back. It occurs to me that Mr. Delaney has been one of the few adult fixtures in my life. First as my parents’ close friend and confidant, then as a substitute father figure, coming by the house regularly to check up on us in the months following the shooting. He’d been holding my mother together, though I hadn’t thought about it back then. But Mr. Delaney had been the one who’d appear three or four nights a week, quietly making sure food appeared in the fridge, vodka bottles disappeared from the cabinets. He’d tried to get my mom to sell the house, then failing that, at least remodel. For me, he always said. She should do these things to ease her daughter’s stress, help in my recovery.

She’d listened to him, certainly in a way she never would’ve listened to me. My father had been her world. Whereas she and I could never even agree on much of anything.

“We found him … dead, when we first arrived home,” I murmur now. “Clearly, it had just happened. You could smell the gunpowder. And the blood … it was hot on my hair.”

“I’m sorry, Evie.”

“There was no sign of anyone else. No cars on the drive, no one in the home. And my father, those past few months, his mood had grown darker.”

“On occasion, the genius in your father got the better of him. But he always came out the other side. He told me once, that was the power of fatherhood. Even when he felt he was failing at solving the great mysteries of the universe, he knew he would never fail you.”

“I thought he had.” Suddenly, I’m crying. I hadn’t expected to. But all these years later … I haven’t been carrying around just the shame of my secret, but the pain that my father chose to end his own life rather than stay with us. The father I loved so much. The father I would’ve done anything to make happy.

I turn back to the window, wipe hastily at my cheeks.

“You didn’t pull the trigger,” Delaney states now.

“No. He’d already shown me how to load and unload the Remington. I wouldn’t have made such a stupid mistake. But as it was, Mom and I weren’t even home.”

“Was he expecting anyone? A TA, a fellow professor?”

“Not that he told us. When we left, he was holed up in his study, standing at a whiteboard, muttering away. You know how he could be. We called out to him that we were off to run errands. I don’t even remember if he answered. We drove away. When we came back …”

Mr. Delaney nods. “You walked into the kitchen first,” he fills in quietly. “Then came your mother, who took one look and fell apart.”

“She told me what to say. She told me what had to be done. In the moment, I never questioned it. Maybe …”

“It’s okay, Evie. I understand. You’d just lost one parent. Of course you went out of your way to make your surviving parent happy.”

I’d never thought of it that way, but it made sense.

“You and your mother were together?”

“Yes.”

“But according to what we just heard from the police, your father didn’t commit suicide. There had to be another person in the house. Was the door open when you walked in?”

“The back door was always unlocked during daylight hours. Often because so many students were coming and going.”

“I think you should prepare a statement. Write down in your own words what you can remember from that day. Then give it to me for proofing. Ultimately, we’ll deliver it to the police.”

“So they can charge me in my father’s murder as well?”

“Did you shoot your father, Evie? Remember, anything you tell me is protected.”

“No.”

“Did you shoot your husband? Again, anything you tell me is protected.”

“No.”

“But you pulled the trigger.”

“I shot my husband’s computer.”

Delaney takes his eyes off the wheel long enough to give me a look. “Interesting. Well then, sounds to me like we have some work ahead of us.”

“Why do I only love men who leave me?” I whisper.

“I don’t know, honey. Some of us just aren’t lucky in love.”

—

MR. DELANEY TAKES me to lunch. A sandwich place he knows downtown. He doesn’t fuss over me as openly as my mother, but he adds orange juice to my salad order and refuses to utter a word until at least a quarter of my food is consumed. His own choice is a rare roast beef sandwich with horseradish mayo. Once, I would’ve ordered the same. Now, in my delicate state, the sight of the bloody beef makes me nauseous. I do my best to focus on my lunch, take small bites, chew thoroughly. Even if I have no interest in sustenance, the baby does. Everything I do next, the whole rest of my life, this is what—this is who—my life will be about.