Page 82 of We Are All Guilty Here

Sharing a moment of laughter with her brother helped lift a little bit of weight from Jude’s chest. She was glad that Emmy had gotten a better version of Myrna and Gerald than she’d had. “Every kid gets a different set of parents, even if they grow up in the same house.”

He seemed puzzled by the insight, but then he said, “The FBI guys told me you were a shrink.”

“Criminal psychologist. And you’re a history teacher and Celia’s the principal at your high school.”

His right eyebrow arched. “Does the FBI know you’re monitoring us?”

“You put all of that on your Facebook page, Hot4Teacher81.”

He laughed. “You married? Got kids?”

“Divorced, but he was a good guy. And I was never the mother-type.” Jude looked at the doors again. The street was dark and empty. “She’s really beautiful.”

“Tough as hell,” he said. “When Emmy was little, we had to put a nightlight in her room, but not because she was afraid of the dark. The dark was afraid of her.”

“Jesus, Tommy.”

He gave a dry chuckle. “She’s so damn smart. Dad took her under his wing. Taught her how to be a cop.”

“Like he did with Henry.”

“No, I meant it when I said they were different. None of the pressure or anger. Dad was patient. Kind. Just trying to help her do something she’s naturally good at.”

Jude couldn’t wrap her head around the notion of a kind and patient Gerald. “She’s good at the job?”

“Better than him in a lot of ways because she gets that people aren’t so black and white.” He shrugged, but it was a big thing. “Her son—Cole—he’s amazing. Got his mother’s smarts and his father’s charm.”

Jude had overheard Emmy’s argument with Jonah. She wouldn’t have called that charm. “She was there when Dad was murdered.”

“They both were. Cole’s a cop, too.” Tommy’s faint smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Neither of them had the guts to go into teaching.”

Jude smiled, too, but she could see this was still a sore spot for Tommy. He was the oldest, but Henry had always been Gerald’s golden child, the one he’d trained to fill his shoes. She said, “I remember Dad telling me that he wasn’t going to waste his time teaching me to be a cop because I’d end up quitting when I got married.”

“I remember, too.” Tommy shrugged again, but she could tell he still felt the slight on her behalf. “Dad wasn’t like that with Emmy. He completely supported her. We all did. Mom watched Cole so she could go to college. Dad gave her time off from work. Celia and I helped when we could.”

“One big happy family.”

Tommy gave her a sharp look. No more smiling. “Don’t hurt her, okay?”

Jude felt a strange kind of emptiness in her body, a pull to disassociate. She’d forgotten the sensation over the decades. This family. This town. These people. Her soul held onto the memory of the pain they’d caused. Some things you could never leave behind.

The Jude back in San Francisco would’ve talked it out, butthis was North Falls and she had come here for a reason. “Okay.”

Tommy nodded. “Okay.”

He left by the chapel. Jude watched until he disappeared through the door behind the lectern. Her brother would find Gerald laid out in the embalming room. Milo sitting at his desk. The disbelief on the funeral director’s face when Jude had walked into his office had been quickly replaced by wariness. She was glad for the icy reception. It told her that no matter how much time had passed, North Falls people had remained the same.

Jude stuck her hands into her jacket pockets as she left through the front doors. She was still on West Coast time, but the five-hour flight, then the three-hour drive, had taken its toll on her body. Then there was the added stress of being back in a place she used to call home.

Downtown North Falls hadn’t changed since she’d fled in the middle of the night with a stash of money and a handle of Jack Daniel’s. The storefronts had different signs, but the buildings were all the same. Low-slung, one-story shops lined either side of Main Street. The sheriff’s station was at one end. The hardware store was at the other. Jude could still remember making the trek between the two with Henry by her side. Checking to see if their father was at work, then skirting through the back alley to see if their mother’s car was parked behind the stacks of lumber where Myrna used to meet Louis Singh for after-school trysts.

Jude looked down at the sidewalk. Watched her boots hit the concrete. Tried to ground herself in the present instead of letting herself get yanked into the past. There was a long speech stuck in Jude’s head, one that she’d silently composed as she’d waited at the gate for her flight, as she’d sat on the plane beside a flirty businessman, as she’d driven down from Atlanta.

Mom, I’m not here to cause trouble. Give me this opportunity to help.

Jude knew what Alzheimer’s looked like. Natalie Daniels, Freddy Henley’s sixth victim, had been the only child of a single parent. Doug Daniels had acted as a liaison between the FBI and the families. He was a peacemaker, a gentle man, and someone whom Jude had enormously respected. She’d been one ofthe first people Doug had told about his diagnosis. She’d also been one of the few people who’d visited him long after he’d lost his mind. The fact that she hadn’t been able to bring Natalie home during his lifetime had been one of Jude’s greatest professional failures.

She reached into her purse for her packet of tissues. She knew she was tearing up over Doug Daniels because she couldn’t bring herself to cry for her lost mother and father.

---