“Thank you,” I said, and blinked back the tears that had sprung up again. For a moment, I’d forgotten Annie was gone, and tried to picture her reaction if I brought Jack to one of the family dinners.
But I’d never be able to see her reaction to anything ever again.
* * *
The staff came out to greet me when I got home. Jack ignored them to pull me in for a hug and a kiss, and then he drove off and left me there with a promise to be in touch ASAP. And then the staff came forward with tear-stained, shocked or sober faces, reaching out to hug me as well.
They’d never hugged me before. “We’re all so sorry, man,” Tony the valet said. After pulling me in for a slap-hug, he gave me a regretful fist bump.
“Yeah,” I said, almost bewildered. None of the staff seemed to like Annie much when she’d lived here. She’d mostly made people’s lives a nightmare. We’dallbeen glad when she bought that house out in Malibu.
Mrs. Kaczmarek, our housekeeper and head of staff, put her arm around me and led me into the house.
“You need anything, Miller, anything at all, just let me know.” She squeezed me tight and I was embarrassed to feel my eyes sting with tears again.
“Thanks,” I sniffled. “I will.”
She lowered her voice. “Your father wanted to see you up in his study when you got home. But after that, come down to the kitchen. I have some pierogis for you.”
Pierogis were my favorite—well,herpierogis were my favorite. Mrs. K wasn’t technically our chef, but sometimes she brought in homemade food for the staff to share, and she’d let me have some, too.
I was going to start bawling any second. I pulled away from her motherly arm and scrubbed at my nose with the back of my sleeve. “Thanks, I’d better—” I jerked a thumb upstairs and then turned and walked away as fast as I could.
I stopped off in a guest bathroom along the way to blow my nose on toilet paper and splash my face with water. And then I went to my father’s study.
The door was closed, a big forbidding wooden door that always dredged up bad memories. Nothing good had ever happened in my father’s study. But I raised a fist and knocked, and when his sharp, “Yes?” sounded from inside, I opened the door and went in.
My father’s study was rarely used. Paneled extensively in mahogany, it always seemed a little darker to me than the rest of the house. My father, a tall, wiry man who always dressed in suits and never had a hair out of place, was seated behind his desk, looking at his computer. His face, when he looked over at me, was impassive. No trace of grief. No clue that this man had lost his only daughter. “Miller,” he said with distaste. “Where have you been? I told you I would be back this morning.”
I hadn’t expected a “How are you,” but there was a part of me that hadhopedfor it. Always hoped for it: a father who saw me as more than a nuisance, as more than a sign of failure, as more than a shadow on the spotlight of my sister’s glory.
“I’ve been—”
“The cremation has been booked,” he went on. I hurried to sit down in the chair opposite him. “Private, of course. Just the two of us. Your mother is filming and the schedule does not allow her to attend.”
“Doesn’t…allow her to attend?” I repeated. I understood the words, but not the sentiment.
“You are not to invite anyone to the cremation. There will be a suitable public memorial later, which I’ve asked Craig Wyatt to arrange.”
I just sat there, taking it in.
“The cremation is tomorrow at ten-thirty.” He threw a business card across the desk and I picked it up automatically. It was a funeral home, with the address and time scribbled on the back of it. “Press release has been arranged. I’m told the police have the culprit and that the case will be closed quickly.”
My mouth dropped open at that. “Wait—theyknowwho did it?”
“Some addict. He’s been identified by witnesses. A mugging gone wrong.”
“But—”
“That’s all.” He gave a wave of dismissal and looked back to his computer.
I gripped the arms of the chair, but I didn’t move. “Don’t you care at all, Dad? Don’t you care that Annie’s lying there cold, that everything she was and everything she could have been—it’s all—gone?”
He didn’t even look at me. He lookedthroughme. “I have a lot of paperwork to get through, Miller.”
But I wasn’t done. “When did you even get a chance to speak with the cops about the case? You just got back into town. When I was there, they told me it would takedaysbefore the autopsy was complete, not to mention speak to potential witnesses, process the crime scene—” I stopped, because my father had stood, abruptly, and was coming around the side of the desk toward me.
“What do you mean,when you were there?” he hissed, leaning over my chair.
