Daddy held up two hands. “Oh, come on, Walt. It’s just teenagers blowing off steam over a girl. You and I have both been there.”
Walter’s eyes had turned to slits. “That we have, Sam,” he said, and threw another look at Mama. “That we have.”
Mama flushed all kinds of red and hissed, “Get out, Walter. Get the hell out of my house or I’ll call the police.”
“Oh, yeah?” The big man hadn’t been intimidated. “Call ’em. The only one they’ll arrest is that kid of his,” he said, hitching his chin at Daddy. “He’s trouble, Zelda. Real trouble.” Then to Daddy, he pointed a finger, cocked like a gun. “You keep your boy away from my son.”
“Or?”
“Or you’ll live to regret it,” he’d vowed. And then he was out the door, slamming it with enough force that the whole house had seemed to shake.
Kara hadn’t remembered the details she did now, but upon questioning by Margrove at the trial she’d said that she’d remembered Walter fighting with Daddy and Mama, that he was afraid for Donner. The DA had twisted that all around and made it seem that Jonas was the reason Walter was angry and that his threats had been empty.
Marlie had seen Kara out of the corner of her eye. “Go back to your room, Kara-Bear,” she’d said, and shepherded her younger sister down the hallway.
“But your dad is mean.”
Marlie had leaned down and shaken her head. She’d been ashen faced and her lips had trembled a bit, but she’d said, “Grown-ups get mad just like kids.”
Truer words were never spoken, Kara thought now. Walking up the two steps to the porch, reliving the moment, she explained it all to Tate. “So Walter left, but Silas Dean, who had been Daddy’s partner, had been here, too. She swallowed. Hard. “Silas and Daddy were in a shouting match in the den. I could hear them from the living room,” she said, remembering how Samuel McIntyre’s partner had burst through the door and turned at the foot of the stairs near the grandfather clock. “I swear, McIntyre. This isn’t the last of it. What you did could have ruined me.”
“It was a bad investment,” Daddy had said, but he was mad, his eyes burning into the shorter man. “It’s over.”
“It nearly wiped me out!’ Dean was red faced and spitting. “I’ll take you to court and . . . and I’ll get even, Sam. I swear it. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get my pound of flesh. Watch your damned back, McIntyre.”
“Leave it alone, Silas. It’s done.”
“And it’s cost us thousands. Me thousands.”
“Ancient history.”
“You’re a fucker, McIntyre. You knew this was how it was going to go down and you’ll live to regret it. I’ll make sure of it,” Silas had said.
She shuddered at the memory, rubbed her forehead that was still tender as she forced herself to concentrate, to pull up recollections that preferred to stay hidden deep in her subconscious. “There was Daddy’s business and his trouble with his ex-partner, threats of a lawsuit.” She shivered. “Silas Dean was really mad when he left, backed up and hit a tree, I heard it, saw the crumpled bumper. I’d . . . I’d forgotten.” Like so many other things, she thought.
“Could that be why Margrove had shown up, because Dean was threatening your father?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Anything could be.” And that was the truth. Screwing up her courage, she reached for the handle of the door, tried to pull it open. It was shut tight.
Tate said, “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”
“No, but it was worth a try.”
“Let me.” He set his backpack on the dusty floorboards, unzipped the bag and retrieved two small flashlights. “Hold this,” he said, handing her one before delving once more into the backpack and pulling out a small black case from his jacket pocket. “Train the beam on the lock.” She did, and he pulled off one glove to hold it in his teeth, then opened the case of lock picks. “By the way,” he told her, working two thin picks and listening, then hearing the lock click open. “I don’t consider this breaking and entering, since I’m pretty sure you own the place.”
“Great. That gives me so much peace of mind,” she said sarcastically as he put the locks away and pulled on his glove again.
Her insides were shaking as she pushed open the door, then stepped into her past.
Inside, she shined the intense beam of her LED flashlight up the massive staircase, over the wider lower steps, past the landing and upward to the open railing of the floor above. Illumination splashed on the darkened balusters caused shadows to play on tattered wallpaper.