Dad met my eyes. “You told them what that day was?”
“Yes.” I didn’t elaborate, saw no point in rehashing thewhysof that day. “How did you end up at Stella’s, Dad?” I still had a hard time picturing him in there. He wasn’t a gambler, as far as I knew, anyway, and there were a lot of pubs and bars closer to home that were more his style.
“I—” He faltered, then held out his hands. “I don’t remember. I didn’t start out with any intention of going there, I can tell you that.”
“Have you been there before?” Max asked, leaning forward. “The back bar specifically.”
“A couple of times,” Dad answered, surprising me. “What?” he said, noticing my expression. “I’m not a heavy gambler, but I like a game of cards now and again. We also have a limit going in, though. It’s just for fun.”
“Who do you play with?” I asked, wondering what else I didn’t know about my dad. Not that he had to tell me everything, I just…Fuck. I scrubbed a hand through my hair.
“Friends, Jake. I do have those you know.” He set a hand on my knee. “It’s okay if we don’t know everything about each other’s lives.”
“I know, I just never pictured youthere.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t go often. And I wasn’t stupid enough to even think of going there onthatday.”
“Yet you ended up there.” Max eyed Dad’s phone where it sat on the coffee table. “Did you check your phone after that night? See if anyone had called or messaged you?”
“As soon as I got home.”
“And?”
Dad held out his hands. “Nothing.”
Max fidgeted beside me, and I knew what he wanted without having to ask. Apparently so did my dad.
“Here,” Dad said. “Have a look for yourself.” He handed his phone to Max.
We sat there in silence, watching Max scroll through my dad’s messages and then call records.
“Jake’s messages are the last ones you received that night. And Jake’s the only one that tried to call you.” He handed the phone back. “Which tells us fuck all.” Max sat back with a huff of frustration, hands in his hair.
“Let’s try it a different way,” I said, squeezing Max’s knee. “Dad, what’s the last thing you remember doing that day?”
His smile was bittersweet. “I picked up some flowers to take to the cemetery, yellow chrysanthemums.”
Mum’s favourite.
“I went to see her, like I always do. Talked to her for a while, I couldn’t tell you how long, but I remember the sun was on its way to setting by the time I left.”
“So probably around six thirty to seven o’clock,” I mused. “I must’ve just missed you.” If only I’d been a few minutes earlier, maybe none of this would’ve happened. “Then what?” I asked, trying not to dwell on that.
“I think…” he rubbed his forehead. “I think maybe I wanted to go for a run, lose myself to my wolf for a while. It’s what I usually do when I feel like that. I don’t remember if I did or not. Everything after that is…”
“Blurry?” I offered. That much aconite would’ve made anyone forget.
Dad shook his head. “No. It’s not that I’m struggling to fit pieces together, or that my memory is fragmented or hazy. There’s just nothing there. Not until I woke up in that room.”
Being blackout drunk wasn’t a new phenomenon, even among non-humans. Max and I had handled our fair share of cases involving aconite-laced alcohol and a lack of memory. But they were usually minor grievances.
Not murder.
“Like I told you before,” Dad said, giving me that same resigned look he’d worn the last time we discussed this. “There’s no point going over this again when the evidence against me is so damning.”
Max and I shared a look.
He didn’t think my dad was guilty. I saw it in his eyes, in his body language, all of his questions designed to find evidence to dispute what Xen had told us.
