The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(96)

We usually had tea at her house after our walks. Sometimes I stayed for lunch, if we talked for a long time. It depended on what we had to say.

This time, Anna was just starting tea when then there was a loud knock on the door.

“Maybe it’s the mailman dropping something off?” she guessed.

But it was Liam.

“Liam, what are you doing here?” asked Anna.

“I had to come,” he said. He glanced up at me, and I thought he would ask me to leave, but he didn’t. “I have to tell you something.”

“All right, but come in and sit down. Did you fly here?”

He shook his head. “Drove.”

“From Tacoma?” said Anna. “Did you stop?”

He shook his head again. “I should have told you this before. At the funeral. Maybe before that. I don’t know. I didn’t want anything to happen to Dad and I was afraid—” He gasped in air and shook his head.

“Sit, sit,” said Anna, gesturing to the front room. It didn’t look the same as it had when Tobias had been alive. There were a few more feminine touches than before, and some of the furniture she had gotten rid of completely. She had also painted one of the walls a deep maroon with texturing. I liked it a lot.

Liam looked around and finally sat on the couch gingerly, as if he wasn’t sure it would hold him. The couch had a floral pattern that matched the wall, one of the new pieces Anna had put in.

“Tea?” asked Anna. She brought some in from the kitchen, but he only seemed to pretend to sip at it. “You know, your father is gone now, but nothing you say about him will change the man he was, the husband and father we both know he was,” said Anna. She seemed relaxed and her tone was calm.

“Yes. He was a good man,” said Liam. Then the words started pouring out of him. “I remember now. What happened all those years ago.”

“When? What do you mean?” asked Anna. Her voice was a little strained now.

Liam set down the tea and waved his hands. “Dad. And Helena. My mother. The day she disappeared.”

“Oh,” said Anna. She sat down abruptly on the couch next to Liam.

Then I could see Liam’s face clearly, and it was alight as if with revelation. “I heard them arguing that night. I was supposed to be asleep in bed, and I knew Dad would get mad at me if I came out of my room. But I heard them shouting and I was scared.” His voice became more high-pitched and less clearly pronounced, like a child’s. “I don’t remember what they were arguing about. I don’t think I understood it then. But she threw something at him. I heard it shatter against the wall.” He shuddered as if it were happening now instead of thirty years ago.

Was Liam trying to argue that Tobias might have had some excuse for what he had done? That it had been self-defense?

“Did you hear Tobias—hurt her?” asked Anna. Her voice sounded stuffy, as if she had a cold, but I didn’t see any tears on her face.

“No. You don’t understand. Dad didn’t kill her.” He sucked in a huge breath.

“I know you don’t want to believe that, Liam. Neither of us does. Tobias was a good man, but we have to accept that something happened between them that changed that. Maybe for only one moment. I don’t know how he could have changed back so quickly, but he did. The evil closed over him and then he broke free of it again. He was a good man, but he also hurt your mother, Liam,” said Anna. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at a point just past my head, on the other side of the room, as if that was the only way she could keep herself calm enough to speak about her husband this way.

“No! I saw—I heard what happened,” said Liam, standing up. His teacup fell to the carpet. None of us moved to pick it up, despite the stain it was spreading on the tan threads. “There was someone else there. I heard the door open, and I heard another voice. It was deeper than Dad’s, and it spoke to her. To Helena, my mother.”

He moved to the door, and gestured as if opening it. “I heard her say Daddy. Like she was calling the other man Daddy. He was angry with her and she was begging him not to hurt them. They’re babies, she said. I think she was talking about me and Tomas. I was mad, then, that she called me a baby. Tomas was a baby, not me. And then he said that they were—we were—little bastards, little demons sent from hell. And then I heard Dad say that he loved his wife and his sons as much as any man ever had.”

Anna was stiff with tension, leaning out of her seat on the couch, her neck stretched as far as it would go.

Liam let out a small gagging sound, but nothing came up with it. “And then,” he said hoarsely, “I heard a scream, and a thump. After that, I didn’t hear anything except the door closing again. I fell asleep.” He looked as innocent as a little boy at that moment, a boy whose life had been devastated and who had heard it happen, and did not understand it in the least, who only knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Could Helena’s father have been the one who killed her? Had I been as wrong about Tobias as I had been about Jared Helm? And in the same way? Two murders in our ward, but neither of them the kind of murder I had imagined, a husband killing his wife. But fathers had so much power over their daughters, even when they were grown. Sometimes in our world, we forget that. A father is like a god. Thus we call God “Father in Heaven.”