Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(59)

Again, I wonder if my mom ever felt that way about me.

“Why didn’t my parents have more children?” I ask Mr. Delaney halfway through my salad. If my question surprises him, he’s an experienced enough lawyer to hide it.

“I don’t know. Have you ever asked?”

I give him a look. He grins back. The silver fox can be charming when he wants. Already, I’d noticed several female heads turning to admire the new lunch addition. Then they scowled at me, no doubt thinking I was his much-too-young trophy wife, because handsome men are never allowed to be merely friends with other women.

“Your father was nervous,” he says at last, picking up a napkin, dabbing at his meticulously trimmed mustache. “When your mother found out she was pregnant, he was excited, but concerned. As he put it, no genius in history has been noted for their parenting skills.”

“Was I a surprise?”

“Always.”

I roll my eyes at him again. “I mean, did they want to have children?”

“I don’t think they would’ve actively sought it out,” Mr. Delaney allows after a minute, “but I would also say, you were the light of your father’s life. Your turn.” He looks at me. “Is your baby a surprise?”

“Yes. No. Kind of. We’d been trying once. But had mostly given up. And then …”

“I’ve heard that. Sometimes, not trying is exactly what a new life-form needs most. Did you love Conrad?” he asks me softly.

“Yes. No. Kind of.”

That smile again, but a bit sad this time, as if he knows exactly what I mean.

“In the beginning,” I hear myself say. “I thought he was everything I could ever want. Outgoing, funny, compassionate. He sought me out. He looked at me. He wanted to talk to me. He wanted to be with me. I know it sounds awful. Like an exercise in narcissism. But in my whole life, it never felt like anyone wanted me. Then, after my father died—”

“And you took the blame.”

“Let’s just say if I was the quiet weird kid before, I was the scary weird kid after.” I shrug.

“You know, your father worried you’d be gifted like him.”

“He worried?”

“It’s a lonely life, in case you didn’t notice. His brain was exceptional because it didn’t work like anyone else’s. But it put him forever out of step with others. Even in elite math circles, he stood out.”

“One of the greatest minds of his generation,” I intoned. And suddenly, I feel like crying again, because I’d never wanted the genius, just the father, and I still missed him so much.

“If you loved Conrad,” Mr. Delaney asks softly, “what do you think happened to your relationship?”

I can’t answer right away. When I do, the words are hard to say. “I don’t think I’m good at marriage.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know how to trust. I don’t know how to … believe. The kinder Conrad was to me … the more I grew suspicious. I’d wonder what he wanted, what he wasn’t saying.”

“You thought he was being unfaithful?”

“I don’t know. He was gone so often on business trips, but when he came home, he didn’t want to talk about it. Life on the road is boring, he’d tell me. Let’s hear about your week. Except I didn’t believe he really wanted to learn about my week. He just didn’t want to talk about his.”

“You grew up in a household with adults who generally had an agenda.”

I have to smile because I know exactly whom he’s talking about. “My mom.”

“Some men do like to hear from the women they love.”

“I know. And I’d tell myself that. The problem is me. I believed my husband had secrets because, of course, I have this huge secret. But then, I’d notice little things, see little things …”

“Such as?”

“Conrad knew everyone. Every neighbor who stopped by, every fellow teacher of mine. He was a walking encyclopedia of names, faces, vital statistics. Except … no one knew Conrad. Where were his colleagues, family, friends? He’d told me his parents had died in an accident years ago. Our marriage was very small, at the courthouse because Mom—”

“Didn’t approve.”

“But month after month, year after year … All these people Conrad could tell you so much about, and yet no dinner with the neighbors, no guys’ night out. He always had an excuse. For someone who appeared so outgoing, if you stepped back, peered at him from a distance, he was a loner. Separate from all of us. Even with me.”

“Did you ever ask him about it?”

“He said he had me, he didn’t need anything more.”

“Romantic.”

I look Mr. Delaney in the eye. “Is it? Because my knee-jerk reaction was that he was lying. So again, was the problem him, or me?”

“Do you have close friends?”

I shrug, uncomfortable. “I have a colleague, another teacher at the school. She and I often have lunch together. But see, I know I’m antisocial. And frankly, given that I’ve spent my adult life being the woman who killed her own father, I have good reasons for being reserved. I admit to these things. Conrad … He came across one way, but over time if you paid attention …” I shake my head. “I felt sometimes he was less a person, and more a character in a play. He said the right things, but were they things he really meant, or just the next lines of dialogue?”