The Bad Daughter(72)

“Shit,” Alec said.

“Now, Alec. Or I swear I’m going back to L.A. and you can deal with this crap on your own. Is that what you really want?”

There was a long pause. Alec swept his hair off his forehead, unconsciously mimicking Dylan Campbell. He looked up and down the dried-out, deserted stretch of country road, as if hoping for someone to come to his rescue. “I came to see Tara,” he said finally, his voice so low that Robin had to strain to hear him.

It took another beat for his words to register. “You came to see Tara?”

“What do you mean, you came to see Tara?” Melanie demanded. “You were in their house that night?”

“No,” Alec said quickly. “I never went inside. Tara and I were supposed to meet at the Riverbank Inn. She called around nine, said there were problems and she couldn’t get away.”

“Wait—go back,” Melanie said. “What do you mean, you were supposed to meet?”

Robin fell back against the side of her sister’s car, the heat of its exterior burning through her clothes. So her suspicions about Alec and Tara had been correct. “They were having an affair.”

“It was more than an affair,” Alec said sharply. “We were in love. We always have been. She knew marrying Dad had been a huge mistake. She was planning to leave him.”

“Holy shit,” said Melanie.

Robin stared at her brother, her eyes filling with tears. “I think you better start at the beginning.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


“Can we at least get in the car, so I can put on the air conditioner?” Melanie pleaded.

The three siblings climbed back into the old Impala, Melanie in front, Robin and Alec in the back, Robin holding tight to her brother’s hand. Melanie started the engine, and a weak blast of tepid air shot toward the backseat.

“It started about a year ago,” Alec began without prompting. “Tara emailed me, said she was unhappy, that Dad was up to his old tricks, that she had no one to talk to, that she missed me, that sort of thing. I wasn’t going to respond, but I never did have a whole lot of willpower where Tara was concerned, and soon we were emailing each other pretty much every day.

“I guess Dad figured that something was up, that Tara was unhappy and maybe getting restless,” Alec continued, “because he suddenly agreed they should move into their own place. Tara had been after him to do that ever since they got married, but you know how stubborn Dad could be, and he wouldn’t budge. Suddenly, out of the blue, he up and decides she’s right—they need their own space. He’s going to build her the home of her dreams, yada, yada, yada. Of course, since this is Dad, what he’s going to build her is really the home of his dreams. He’s making all the decisions—where they’re going to build, how they’re going to decorate. He knows everything, after all.

“Except what he doesn’t know is that the prestigious decorating firm he hires, McMillan and Loftus, is a mere ten blocks from my apartment in San Francisco, which makes it very easy for Tara and me to get together.

“At first, nothing happened. We’d meet for coffee. We’d talk. The first time, she actually brought Cassidy with her. We pretended to be just a couple of old friends who’d happened to bump into each other on the street. Tara introduced me to Cassidy as Tom Richards, this guy she went to school with. Luckily, Cassidy didn’t remember me, and I probably wouldn’t have recognized her, she’d grown up so much. We went back to my apartment, I made the kid some hot chocolate, Tara and I pretended to catch up on old times. Anyway, after that, Tara usually came alone. It didn’t take long for things to heat up. Soon I was driving three hours to Red Bluff on a semi-regular basis. We’d meet at various motels on the outskirts of town.”

“And Dad never suspected?” Melanie asked.

“If he suspected Tara was having an affair, which frankly I doubt his ego would permit, he certainly never suspected it was with me.”

“Okay,” Robin said, perspiring profusely despite the now cooler air. “So you and Tara were having an affair—”

“We were in love,” Alec corrected a second time.

“You were in love,” Robin repeated. “Was she planning to tell Dad?”

“She was going to, but then there was the move to the new house and the house-warming party. She didn’t want to embarrass Dad, and she didn’t want to upset Cassidy, who for some inexplicable reason seems to really love our father. It just never felt like the right time. Plus Tara was worried about how Dad would react when she told him she was planning to leave him. I offered to be there with her, but she didn’t think that was a good idea. We were going to figure it out that night, make concrete plans, but then she called, said there were problems and she wouldn’t be able to make it, said she’d phone me later.”

Alec looked toward the window, as if watching the scene play out in the reflection of the glass.

“When it was after midnight and she still hadn’t phoned, I got worried and called her, but she didn’t pick up. So I drove over to the house. As soon as I got to the street, I saw the police cars and the ambulance. I thought maybe Dad had had a heart attack when she told him she was leaving, or that he’d done something crazy, maybe threatened her and she’d called the cops. To be honest, I don’t know what I thought. So I drove around for a while, trying to figure out what I should do, and I ended up driving back to San Francisco. Next thing I knew, the two of you were leaving frantic messages on my voice mail.”