Page 69 of Home Before Dark

“Lucky me,” I say before two more swigs of bourbon.

The two of us fall into a comfortable silence, Dane on one bed, me on the other, content with simply drinking and staring at the Red Sox game flickering on the twenty-year-old television.

“Do you really think it was Petra Ditmer in the ceiling?” Dane eventually says.

“Yeah, I do.”

“God, her poor mother.”

“Did you know her?” I ask.

“I might have met her one of the times I was here visiting my grandparents. But if I did, I don’t remember it.”

“You said you talked to my father when he came to the house each year,” I say. “What did you talk about?”

Dane sips his beer a moment, thinking. “The house. The grounds. If anything had needed fixing.”

“That’s all? Basic maintenance stuff?”

“Pretty much,” Dane says. “Sometimes we’d talk about the Red Sox or the weather.”

“Did he ever mention Petra Ditmer?”

“He asked me about Elsa and Hannah. How they were doing. If they needed money.”

An odd question to ask someone. I want to think it was my father being charitable. But I suspect it might have been something else—like a guilt-prompted desire to pay them off.

I gulp down more bourbon, hoping it will stop me from thinkingthis way. I should be certain of my father’s innocence. Instead, I’m the opposite. Waffling and unsure.

“Do you think it’s possible to believe two things at once?” I ask Dane.

“It depends on if those things cancel each other out,” he says. “For example, I believe Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. I also believe he’s an asshole. One belief does not negate the other. They can exist at the same time.”

“I was talking about something more personal.”

“You’re in New England. The Patriotsarepersonal.”

On one hand, I’m grateful for the way Dane is trying to take my mind off things with the booze and the banter, but it’s also frustrating—the same kind of avoidance tactics my parents used.

“You know what I’m talking about,” I say. “I truly believe my father wasn’t capable of killing anyone, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl. He was never violent. Never raised a hand to hurt me. Plus, I knew him. He was doting and decent and kind.”

“You also think he was a liar,” Dane says, as if I need reminding.

“He was,” I say. “Which is why I can’t stop thinking that maybe hediddo something. That if the Book was a lie, then maybe everything about him was. The things he said. The way he acted. His entire life. Maybe no one really knew him. Not even me.”

“You really think he killed Petra?”

“No,” I say.

“Then you think he’s innocent.”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

The truth is that I don’t know what I think. Even though all signs point to his being involved in Petra’s death, I’m having a hard time seeing my father as a killer. Equally difficult is thinking he’s completely innocent. He lied to me literally until the end of his life. And people don’t lie unless they’re hiding something.

Or want to spare someone the truth.

Whatever that truth is, I know Petra’s death was part of it.

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