Silence fell over the room. Even Everly switched to straight staring.
After a few beats of quiet, Mom spoke again. A hum of anger threaded through her voice. “You don’t appreciate all I do for you.”
I kissed Everly. Pretended to drop her, which she loved. I waited for her big smile to return before I set her down in her mound of blocks.
“Do we really have to do this now?” I lowered my voice even as a scream begged for release.
“Fine.” Mom slipped off the barstool and marched toward the doorway. “When you’re ready to have a grown-up discussion, call me. Until then, I hope your babysitter, or nanny or whatever Agatha’s title is, doesn’t go on vacation.”
Mom’s stomping steps echoed down the hallway. The bang of the front door came next. A loud and unnecessary exit, but at least she was gone.
Lukas whistled. “She’s on fire.”
“The question is why she thinks she’s qualified to be included in a grown-up discussion.” Where was that open wine bottle? I scanned the countertops but didn’t see it.
Clink. Clink. “They’re broken.”
Lukas laughed as he watched Everly smack two blocks together.
“Let me help.” He crouched down to eye level and gently lifted the toys from her chubby little hands.
For the next few minutes, he arranged and stacked the blocks, removing and repositioning them until Everly approved and thanked him in her sweet voice. She also gave him a quick hug before turning her full attention to the blocks on the floor.
She wasn’t his but I loved watching them interact. Loved and hated. During their play lightness filled me. A satisfaction and sense of calm grounded me. Then he turned back to me and the punch of reality, of knowing that to Everly he would only ever be the guy her mom knew and she saw infrequently in her life, swept through me with a chill that left me shaking.
“You’re good with her.” I could hear the sadness in my voice.
The sound must have registered with him because he reached over and put his hand on mine. “So are you. Don’t let your mom convince you otherwise.”
After all we’d been through, that remained—the respect. We fought. Sometimes we brawled. He pissed me off. I disappointed him. But he was a good man. My biggest regret was that whenthe Tanners disappeared, I lost him, too. The two incidents would forever and hopelessly be intertwined.
“Thanks. I needed to hear that.”
“Anytime.” He gave my hand a final squeeze before letting go. “The good news is your mom will have some money soon. The life insurance should help.”
Not me. I’d be fighting money requests for the rest of my life, thanks to getting the retirement accounts. I’d sit down and figure out how to off-load money on Mom in a way that she wouldn’t run through it. Not today. I needed more energy for that monumental task.
“The attorney said he’d send the paperwork and account information for everything soon. I’ll have a better idea about finances then.” The will reading or whatever it was still had me reeling. “But why did Xavier do things this way? Why tie me to Mom financially?”
“I’d say you pissed him off, but the real answer is he was an asshole. Being dead didn’t cure him of that.”
“True.” Xavier had been a savvy bastard. I’d bet he left the assets to me on purpose, knowing it would suck me into a lifetime battle with Mom.
Lukas rubbed his hand over his tie in the same way he always did when he was thinking and deciding if he should share his thoughts out loud. “He also could be a murderer.”
I groaned. I’d been holding the noise in for hours but this topic guaranteed it would seep out. “I know a few people still think he killed his sister, my grandmother, way back. There was no reason for him to do it, and he wasn’t even in town when that happened. The fire started with a portable heater.”
“That’s not the only horrific death in Xavier’s past and it’s not the one I meant.” Lukas didn’t let my weariness stop him. “With Aubrey’s reappearance and all the questions circulating about the other missing Tanner family members, the rumors about Xavier’s wife, Patrick’s mom, have resurfaced.”
Not this again.“Why?”
“You know why.” Lukas hesitated just long enough to make the air in the room grow thick. “Most people believe that if Patrick killed Victoria he was following Xavier’s example. That Xavier started this downward family spiral thirty-two years ago when he killed his wife.”
Chapter Twenty
Stella
Dea Tanner. Xavier’s wife. Patrick’s mother. She went on a holiday one week in May so many years ago and never came back. She died in the most brutal way, far from home and all alone. The horror of her life ending in such tragedy had shaken almost everyone in town.
