Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(96)

“Tell me about it,” I mutter.

“She does love you.”

I shrug. “She is the sun. She will always be the sun. I can only orbit around her, and sometimes, that’s really draining.”

“She is who she is, just as I am who I am.”

“Is that what the three of you had in common? My mother, who needs what she needs, whether she wants to or not. My father, whose brain worked the way it worked whether he wanted it to or not. And you, who preferred who you preferred, whether you wanted to or not.”

“The three misfits,” Mr. Delaney concedes.

It’s hard for me to think of my parents that way. My father had always been the genius, while my mother has always been the gorgeous hostess, every frosted strand of hair. Add to that Mr. Delaney, the silver fox himself, one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Boston …

But before all of that, they were kids. Given my own awkward years, is it really so strange to think they had their own?

“Do you want to know another secret?” Mr. Delaney asks me.

“Yes!”

“Back in those days, I was a complete reprobate.”

“A wild child?”

“They say inside every criminal defense lawyer is an excellent criminal, hence our ability to be so good at our jobs. I met your father outside a bar, brawling with another student.”

“You were fighting? Like punching and hitting?” I take in his three-hundred-dollar cashmere sweater and can’t picture it.

“Please, I was winning.” His tone turns dry. “You don’t have to look so surprised.”

“Umm … Why were you fighting?”

“I don’t even remember. Back then, I didn’t need much of an excuse. Hot Irish temper. A great deal of misplaced rage. A need, I think, to prove myself a man in the more elemental ways, since there was one fundamental way I could not.”

I can’t help myself. “I’m sorry.”

“All before your time. And everyone has to spend their days young and stupid. Otherwise we’d never figure out how to grow up.”

“My father didn’t mind you beating up the other kid?”

“The other student had been heckling him in the bar. Your father was so awkwardly cute about trying to thank me for taking down his tormentor, how could I resist when he offered to buy me a beer?”

Now I’m not so certain about Mr. Delaney and my father anymore, and I’m not sure just how many new visions of my childhood I can take.

He smiles at me. We are at the campus, looping around it. From here we’ll have no choice but to park and walk our way to Dr. Ivanova’s office.

“I did have a crush on your father. In the very beginning. He may have known it, too. It was always hard to tell with him. Your father came across as socially awkward, disconnected. But later, if you asked him questions about an evening, a person, a situation … The things he saw. I used to catch my breath at the sheer stunning clarity of his insights. And I would wonder what a burden it had to be to see everyone, everything, so exactly.”

“He saw me,” I hear myself whisper. I look down at my lap. “He knew I was an awkward child, and no matter how many forced tea parties my mother arranged, I’d never belong with my own peers. He knew how much I needed the piano, something that was mine. He knew how much I needed him.”

“Earl loved you very much.”

“My father loved all of us very much.”

Mr. Delaney smiles sadly, turns into the parking garage. “I can honestly say, he was one of the great loves of my life. And there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss him.”

Looking at his face, I believe him.

—

DR. KATARINA IVANOVA glances up from her desk as I walk into her office. She looks older than in her website photo. Thicker around the face. She also doesn’t look happy to see me. Her expression sours further when Mr. Delaney appears behind me.

Her office is small, nothing special. Linoleum floors, no windows, fluorescent lights.

She rises from behind her desk. She’s wearing a dark cranberry-colored wool wrap dress that flatters her lush figure and rich hair. Clearly, Dr. Ivanova feels no need to apologize for being one of the only female professors in the math department. I want to like her for that, but her wariness has set me on edge. I’m already not sure I want to learn more about her—her and my father.

“Evelyn Hopkins?” she says, calling me by my maiden name.

I don’t correct her. I’m here about my father, so when I’d called, using the name Hopkins had made more sense.

“Dick,” she says, nodding toward Mr. Delaney. If I hadn’t just had such a revealing conversation with my father’s closest friend, I’d be forming assumptions about how well Dr. Ivanova and Mr. Delaney are acquainted. Now I have no idea.

I take a seat. After a moment, Mr. Delaney joins me. Then the three of us stare at one another. Now that I’m here, I don’t know what I’m trying to ask. What I need to learn.

“I have some questions about my father,” I say at last.

“You said as much by phone.” Dr. Ivanova has resumed her place behind the desk. She leans forward and plants both elbows on the clear surface. It thrusts her chest forward and, given the line of her dress, reveals quite a bit of cleavage. I wonder if this is to distract Mr. Delaney, or if Dr. Ivanova is one of those women who’s used her looks as a weapon for so long, she’s not even aware she’s doing it.