The Bad Daughter(35)

“I don’t know what to think. According to Cassidy, Tara and my father were madly in love.”

“Which is what any child would choose to believe about her parents, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that Tara was seeing someone on the side. She had quite a history, as I’m sure you’re aware. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a young wife has stepped out on her much older husband.”

The name Tom was on the tip of Robin’s tongue. What was stopping her from saying it out loud?

Prescott stood, grabbing his hat before it could fall to the floor. “Guess I should try to locate Dylan Campbell, maybe have a little talk with Donny Warren. Can I drop you somewhere?”

Robin was in no hurry to return home. “I have my sister’s car, thank you. And I think I’ll stick around the hospital for a little while, be here when Cassidy wakes up.”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.” Sheriff Prescott placed his hat on his head, then tipped it toward her. “Oh,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know what kind of car your brother drives, would you?”

“My brother?” Why was he asking about Alec?

“Do you know what kind of car he drives?” the sheriff asked again.

Robin hesitated. “He used to have a Chevy Malibu. But that was a few years ago. He’s probably traded it in by now. Why?”

“You happen to remember what color it was?”

“It was red. Why are you asking about Alec’s car?”

“Just curious.” He tipped his hat a second time. “Talk later.”

Robin watched the sheriff amble down the hall. Only after he was no longer visible did she take her new phone out of her purse and call her brother in San Francisco.

He answered on the first ring. “What’s up?” he said instead of hello.

“Why would the sheriff be asking about your car?” Robin said.

A second of silence.

“The sheriff is asking about my car?”

“The question was ‘why?’?”

“I have no idea.”

“When was the last time you saw Tara?”

“What?!”

“Who’s Tom?”

A pause that was just a fraction too long.

“Tom…? What the hell are you talking about?”

“What’s going on, Alec?”

“By the sound of it, my sister is having some kind of breakdown.”

“Talk to me, Alec. I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“There’s nothing going on. I don’t need your protection.”

“Alec…”

“I have to go.”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me,” Robin warned.

But it was too late. He was already gone.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Robin could recall the exact moment when she’d first suspected that something was happening between Tara and her father.

It was Thanksgiving, and Robin had come home from Berkeley to spend the holiday with her ailing mother. The family was seated around the dining room table, her father at one end, Alec at the other. Tara, who’d been engaged to Alec for the better part of a year, was on their father’s left, with little Cassidy beside her. Landon sat on the other side of the narrow oak table, wedged between Melanie and Robin, rarely lifting his eyes from his plate. Sarah Davis, her body riddled with cancer, had been too weak to leave her bed. In two weeks she would be transferred to St. Elizabeth Community Hospital. She would die four months after that.

It was a subdued celebration, nobody feeling particularly thankful. The turkey Melanie had prepared was dry, the mashed potatoes tasteless, the green beans overcooked, and the mold of red Jell-O uninspiring. There was little conversation, the dinner’s dominant sounds coming from the periodic clanking of cutlery against the plain white dishes and the occasional grunt from Landon.

“So, tell us about your classes,” Tara had ventured at one point.

“They’re fascinating,” Robin said, grateful that someone at the table had expressed an interest. “I mean, they’re really hard. I’m being run off my feet with work, but I’m learning so much.”

“I think it’s so exciting,” Tara said proudly. “We’re going to have a psychologist in the family.”

“What’s a psychologist?” Cassidy asked.

“Somebody who asks a lot of useless questions, then waits for you to answer them,” Melanie answered. She held out her glass. “Could someone who isn’t being run off their feet with work please pour me another glass of wine?”

“Allow me,” their father said, removing the bottle of white wine from its ice bucket and refilling Melanie’s glass. “Tara, how about you? A little more wine?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I should.”

“You definitely should,” Greg Davis said with a wink. “How about I just top you up a bit?”

Tara’s smile was surprisingly shy as she held out her glass.

A wave of anxiety washed through Robin as she watched her father fill Tara’s glass to the halfway mark. The wave turned into a surge, like an electrical charge, when Robin saw his hand brush her best friend’s fingers as he returned the bottle to the ice bucket.