Mak chewed his burger, and she continued sorting out her salad.
“What do you think happened to your mom?” he asked.
“I used to think he killed her,” she said, those blue eyes unblinking. “That’s part of the reason why I got out of there as soon as I could. I blamed him.”
“Do you still?”
“Maybe? When I was in rehab the first time, I had a pretty cool therapist. We talked a lot about why I was so angry. At my mom. At my dad. At Rhonda. My therapist said I had abandonment issues. Well, duh.” She leaned forward, across the table. “Maybe he didn’t actually kill her. But I do know this: She loved me. And she loved my grandma. If she were going to leave, she would have taken us with her, or sent for us. But she didn’t.”
“Did your dad ever talk to you about what he thought happened to your mom?”
“Never. Well, there was this one time—we had a huge fight because I’d stayed out all night with my boyfriend, and he caught me sneaking in through my bedroom window. It was a Saturday morning and he was in a foul mood because Cardinal Mooney had lost the night before, to a team that wasn’t even that good. I knew he’d been drinking, because his eyes were all red and bloodshot. And he grabbed my arm and pinched it really hard. So hard, it scared me. I’d never been scared of him before. I hated him, but I wasn’t afraid of him, you know?”
“He’d never gotten physical with you before?”
“No. He’d yell or he’d give me the silent treatment, but he wasn’t a hitter. Anyway, that morning, like I said, he was pretty wasted, and really worked up. He called me a slut, said I was just like my mom, sneaking around, whoring around.…”
Emma’s eyes teared up and a thin stream of black eyeliner trickled down her cheek.
“I lost it. I started punching him and kicking him and told him if Mom did sneak around it was probably because he was such a dickhead. His face—I’ve never forgotten the expression on his face. I really thought he was gonna hit me when I said that. Instead, he told me if I didn’t straighten up, I was headed for jail. A couple weeks after that, Rhonda told him I’d been stealing her Xanax, and that gave him an excuse to kick me out, which was fine by me.”
Mak dipped a french fry into a puddle of ketchup. “Emma, this is kind of a tough question, but it seems to me, you’re a pretty tough kid. Do you think what your dad said was true? About your mom running around?”
“I’ve always wondered,” Emma admitted. “Once, a couple years ago, I even tried to talk to one of Mom’s best teacher friends from St. Mary’s, Mrs. Logenbuhl. She was always nice to me. Like, she’d take me out for ice cream on my birthday, and that kind of stuff. That night, I out-and-out asked her if she thought my mom was having an affair, and she acted totally shocked, and then she changed the subject.”
“That’s interesting,” Mak said. “Anything else you can tell me? Any other thoughts about any connection she might have had to that house on Tybee?”
“Not really. But if you find something out, you’ll tell me, right?”
“I promise,” he assured her.
He motioned for the server, who brought their check.
“Where are you living now?” he asked.
“I actually moved back home last year.”
“With your dad?” He didn’t bother to hide his surprise.
“As if! No, I mean I’m living in our old house. I bought it,” she said proudly.
“Good for you,” Mak said. “How did that happen?”
“When my grandma died, she left some money for me. It was supposed to be for college, like that was ever gonna happen. But when I turned eighteen, I got my inheritance. So I bought our house back.”
“I bet that’s a good feeling.”
“I hired a private detective, too. To try to find her. He sent away hair from her hairbrush to one of those DNA matching places. You know, in case someone had … found her body.”
“I’m guessing nothing ever came of it?” Mak asked.
“No. Pretty sure the guy ripped me off.”
Makarowicz scowled. What kind of a scumbag ripped off a grieving kid?
“I used to sneak back there, you know? After my dad sold it? At night, I’d climb the fence, and I’d sit in this swing my grandpa hung from a big tree in the backyard. Some nights, I swear, I thought I could hear my mom singing in the kitchen again. I told my therapist about it and she said that was actually a good self-soothing technique.”