“There he is,” he said when I walked in. “Seen all three of my kids before noon on the same day. Gotta almost die more often to get attention, I guess.”
“How you feeling?” I asked.
“Like someone took a chimney brush to my lungs. How about you?”
“Not quite that bad. I’m fine.”
He gazed at me for a few drawn seconds. “I’m so sorry, Andy.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t you, Dad.”
“I must’ve gotten up to make something and . . .” He gestured angrily. “I don’t fucking know. Left the burners on or some damn thing.”
“I did it, not you.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
I told him.
Told him about what Mrs. Tross had seen. About going to Mary’s and then talking to Jill. Told him my theory and that someone was following me. Someone wanting me to stop.
He was quiet for a time. “You can’t know all that for sure.”
“No. I can’t. But I do.”
“Spanner will use everything he can against you. He’s gotta be desperate to pin this on someone.”
“I’m sure he is. But I should’ve turned over the note days ago instead of trying to find them myself. It was selfish.”
“Nothing wrong with not wanting to go to jail. Nothing wrong with being innocent.”
I sighed and set the candy bar on his bedside table. “I’m sorry for all this.” He looked at it, and while he was trying to come up with something to say, I hugged him. “Love you, Dad.”
“You too,” he said, voice husky.
I left a message for Kel on the way out of the hospital. Told her my plans. She’d have the same reaction as Dad. Wouldn’t want me to hand the note over. Might as well be an admission of guilt. A written confession. Seth could write the headline.
Secret lover takes revenge on dutiful husband and community hero.
Maybe it wouldn’t be that tabloidy, but still.
When I got home, I could hardly keep my head up. The caffeine had worn off, and my feet dragged up the front steps, each shoe a thousand pounds. I guess I was allowed to be tired. Hadn’t slept really well in weeks. Almost died two nights ago. Excuses, excuses.
I took the note out of the rice and read it one last time, searching for some hidden clue that would blow the whole thing wide open. But that was for movies, for the books I used to write. Not real life. In real life, people got shot and died. They were taken in the middle of the night and never found. Innocent people spent their lives in prison.
I’d just sit down for a minute in the chair by the window. The sky was cloudy, and the wind had come up. It pried at the eaves, trying to find a way inside. The house creaked, and it was a comforting sound. It followed me down into sleep.
I woke to church bells.
Nothing new on the Loop. The church rang them Sundays and Wednesdays before Mass. It was Wednesday evening. I’d slept longer than I meant to. For that brief, beautiful moment coming out of sleep, I didn’t remember. Those amnesia seconds, blissful and unaware. Then I recalled I would probably be locked in a cell tonight. Be spending hours on an uncomfortable mattress with the sounds of the county jail ringing in my ears instead of church bells.
Always something to look forward to.
For a bit I shuffled around the kitchen, doing anything to avoid the note and what I’d have to do next. Put some dishes away. Cleaned out the top shelf of the fridge. Took the garbage to the garage. All the while a part of me went to work on the rest.
You don’t have to do this.
You can burn the note in the sink. Forget you ever saw it. Forget what happened up the street, forget what you had with her.
Move on.
It wasn’t a novel idea. People did it every day. They pushed the uncomfortable things out of their heads, those pesky failures keeping them up at night. Why remember when all it caused was pain?
Take a page from Dad’s book and forget.
Stop.
I picked the note up and folded it over so I couldn’t read it anymore. It had nothing left to offer me. Maybe someone else could discern something I hadn’t. I thought of Spanner and how much he disliked me, and knew the only thing he’d use the note for would be evidence for my incrimination. Unlike Sergeant Michael O’Rourke—the detective I’d shadowed in the city—Spanner wouldn’t pay attention to details. He’d take the first bit of evidence he could get and hang it around my neck.
I thought about where everything had started and knew O’Rourke had been so right, especially about how cases never moved in a straight line. They zigged and zagged, twisted and turned like an amusement park ride, always ending up in the last place you expected.