Keep Her Safe(58)

“Was he in uniform?”

“Yes . . . I mean, no. I don’t think so?”

“That’s okay. What exactly did he say?”

Again, I see her searching through her thoughts, struggling. “He asked if I’d been talking to anyone from Texas lately about Abe. He asked me if I remembered how Abe died. And then he asked me when I saw you last, Grace. And where you were, I think. I can’t remember his exact words. I was so scared. I begged him to leave you alone. I swore up and down that I hadn’t said anything to anyone.” Her brow furrows. “And then he . . . disappeared. He was there one second, and gone the next. That’s when I got up and ran out of there.”

Gracie hasn’t said a word in all of this, simply sitting and listening, her fists balled in her lap.

Dina’s glassy eyes shift to her. “I’m sorry, Grace. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being afraid that someone might show up and steal you away, hurt you terribly. It was bad enough that I was terrified. Constantly. And then you got older and I . . .” She sighs. “It wouldn’t have changed anything, you knowing that part of it.”

“It would have changed everything!” Gracie bursts out. “I would have known that my dad was innocent! I wouldn’t have spent so many years hating him for ruining our lives!”

“And then you would have had to live with what I know, and believe me, it’s not any better. Knowing who your father was, how good he was and what someone did to him, what they got away with . . .”

Gracie’s anger flares. “No one’s getting away with this!”

“They already have.”

“That’s because you didn’t do anything! You should have gone to the police, or the newspapers, or . . . I don’t know . . . the mayor’s office! You should have told everyone about the guy in your room and about the drug bust that Dad must have had some doubts about. There are so many things you should have done instead of pumping drugs into your body and hiding in this deep, dark hole a thousand miles away for all these years!” Gracie blinks away tears.

“I was so scared for you. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Especially not like that. Knowing Betsy was out there was bad enough.” Dina’s voice cracks with a sob.

“I’m not Betsy. And I’m not letting some asshole scare me into silence.”

“This is why I’ve never told you. You’re so much like your father. So stubborn. I needed to protect you from that.”

“You call this protecting me?” Gracie flings an accusing hand toward the pills by Dina’s bedside. Dina flinches. “I don’t need your version of protection. Besides, I’m not six years old anymore.” Gracie storms through the entryway to the adjoining room, pushing my door until it is nearly closed.

I offer Dina a reassuring smile. “She’ll come around once she cools down.” Maybe. I can’t say if the revelation of these secrets has shrunk or expanded the chasm that exists between them.

All these years of living with this . . . The fact that Dina managed to keep it buried, even in her drug-induced fog, seems impossible. But maybe it’s only because of that fog that she was able to. “Why didn’t you go to my mother with this?”

“Jackie?” Dina hesitates. “Your mother wanted nothing to do with us. I went by your house and she wouldn’t even let me inside. All she said was that it didn’t look good for Abe and she didn’t want to be pulled into the scandal. She seemed more focused on her own reputation and what damage it might cause to have an ex-partner—a friend—who everyone was saying looked as dirty as a sewer rat.”

I’m already shaking my head. It echoes what Gracie told me yesterday, but it doesn’t make sense.

“I was there, Noah,” Dina says softly. “She said the words to me. I wasn’t high when she said them. Besides . . . she and Abe were already at odds when he died.”

“What? You mean they were fighting?”

“I mean, he’d cut her out of his life. Something happened between them not long before that. I don’t know what; he wouldn’t say.”

I frown. “But . . . Abe came over the same day that he died.” He said he’d try to get tickets to a Spurs game.

“Abe wouldn’t let what was going on between the two of them affect you.”

“I don’t get it.”

“But don’t you?” Dina’s eyes soften.

“I sold my soul for what I did and there ain’t no coming back from that.”

Did my mom’s treatment of Dina have more to do with a guilty conscience than concern over her own reputation?

Dina reaches with a feeble hand for a pill bottle but struggles with the cap, her complexion tinged a sickly green.

I gently slip it from her weak grasp and open it for her. But it’s a long moment before I’m able to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“None of this is your fault, Noah.”

No. But it is my mother’s. And I’ve been protecting her.

Dina sets the pill on the nightstand and pulls herself out of bed. “Go to Grace. She trusts you.” She stumbles toward the bathroom, using the wall to catch her balance.

“Are you sure I can’t . . .”

The bathroom’s pocket door slides shut and a moment later, I hear her start to heave. Saliva pools in my mouth at the sound, and I’m forced to go to my room before I follow suit.