“Hardly,” Reid says. “My Freya Faith fan club closed shop decades ago. But your tryst is the only thing anyone’s talking about, that and the fire. What I haven’t heard is when Gilcrest plans to arrest Andrea Haviland.”
“He asked me a million questions this morning,” I say. “He wanted to know where you were when the fire started. Paul and Mom, too.”
“Tell him to ask me himself,” Reid says.
“He’s looking at the money and trying to find another motive,” I say. “Other suspects, too.”
Reid clucks his tongue. “Like a disgruntled lumber supplier. That’s what has you all worked up. Listen, sometimes projects turn into high-stakes shell games, but it all works out in the end. I have to figure out what to move where.”
I haven’t stopped recording since I started in the parking area. I hold up my phone and show Reid the screen. “Idlewood,” I say. “Reid Kilgore, Sunday morning after the fire.”
My brother’s expression turns stony. “I’m not doing this,” he says.
“Do you remember the time I saw Dad? I was at a soccer game here in town. Mrs. Haviland was there, too. Later that night, you read me a story, and I told you I’d seen him.”
“Honestly, Charlie,” Reid says. “You claimed to see Dad so many times, it all runs together.”
“You told me not to mention seeing him to Mom, that it would upset her.”
“Itwouldhave upset her. Who wants to hear that your six-year-old son is conjuring up images of your dead husband?”
“I saw Dad last night. He came to the Landing.”
Reid takes off his glasses. “If Dad started the fire, you could turn that into a podcast, too.”
“I’m not making this up,” I say.
“I don’t care,” Reid says. “I need to get to Burkehaven and talk to the foreman, because if you haven’t put two and two together, I’m in a mess right now, and it’s not one that digging up ancient history will solve. And I don’t give you permission to use anything on that phone. Not one word.”
Reid leaves me beside the cottage. He crosses the footbridge and disappears into the woods. A moment later, he appears on the opposite shore by the cars. I sit on the wraparound porch, in the same spot where Reid stood twenty-five years ago, and that thought I tried to capture earlier returns, this time fully formed. And it makes my blood run cold.
“I’m on the back porch at Idlewood,” I say into my phone. “Sunlight shines off the windshield on my father’s Volvo.” I may be by myself, butwhen I say these next words, I won’t be able to unsay them. “Reid told the police he heard Mr. Haviland saymy loveto my mother, but Reid was here, where I am now, a hundred yards from the parking area. He wouldn’t have heard what Mr. Haviland said, not from this far away.”
I pause the recording, my feet rooted to the porch, not sure what my next move should be or who I could possibly trust with what I’ve realized. Freya poked holes in the story, but this—this is an actual lie, one I can point to and see, one that’s been told to me my entire life.
My mother must know the truth. Maybe this was what she planned to tell me the last time we spoke, and maybe Julian and Freya were right to call her the prime suspect.
I pull up her name on my phone and get voicemail, so I send a text.??I need to talk to you. As soon as you get this. It’s about Dad.??
Right then, my phone rings. I pick up without looking at the screen, expecting to hear my mother’s voice. Instead, it’s Gilcrest. “Would you come by the station in Hero?” he asks.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I say.
I’m halfway to my car when my phone rings again. This time, Seton’s number flashes across the screen. “Where are you?” she asks as soon as I click into the call. “I’ll come get you.”
“I’m on my way to the station.”
“Charlie,” Seton says, her voice barely a whisper, “keep your mouth shut. Don’t say a word.”
Then the call disconnects.
Chapter Twenty-One
A local news truck is parked outside the police station. I hurry up the granite steps and into the small municipal building. Inside, a secretary stops pecking at her computer, her eyes wide, her ponytail swaying back and forth. Behind her, Seton paces in the chief’s office. She glances toward me, but it’s Gilcrest who approaches. “Charlie Kilgore,” he says, taking my arm and steering me into a conference room where he’s set up camp.
He waves toward a chair. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“I don’t want anything to drink,” I say. “I want you to help me sort this out.”
