Page 63 of Death in the Family
“Really?” said Miles, letting his eyes drift to the window, where the rain slapped at the glass.
“On their way,” I lied, watching Miles, Jade, and Norton go. Then I took out my phone.
I was starting to understand, and this new awareness made me fear for our safety even more. I was getting close. Closing in.
But there was still something I needed to do.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I called Carson. In the kitchen. In the middle of an investigation. But I didn’t do it for me. My personal life was irrelevant, my engagement immaterial. I was on a case I’d fucked up bad, determined to stanch the bleeding. And as astonishing as it was at the time, there was a chance Carson had intel I needed in order to make things right.
“Shay, thank God, do you know what time it is? I’ve been waiting for hours, do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”
“I talked to Maureen.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “I also spoke with Maureen McIntyre. I had to know you were okay.”
“And suggest I was mentally ill?”
“Now listen to me. You left me no choice.”
“Why, Carson? Because I didn’t stay home like a good littlegirl? Because I wanted my career back and expected my fiancé to support me?”
“We’ve been over this a million times. You’re not ready!”
“And you’ll keep saying that forever, no matter what I think, while you make sure I continue to feel like a failure. You were never going to help me recoup my career. From day one you’ve been plotting to keep me at home. What was your plan, exactly—to get me fired? Tell all of Jefferson County I’ve got PTSD so there’s nowhere left for me to go?”
“I’m trying to protect you.” As hard as he worked to regulate it, I could hear the faintest trace of insecurity in Carson’s voice. “You aren’t in your right mind. What is it, flashbacks? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re experiencing a sense of disassociation, like you’re outside your body, losing touch with reality. Of course you are, in an environment like that—and that’s just the beginning. This is exactly why I need you to come home.”
He was doing it again, trying to make me distrust myself. As he spoke I imagined him in his high-priced glasses and novelty socks, clenching his jaw just enough to convey discontent. Flexing his foot to tap his toe in the irregular rhythm he knew made me jumpy. Every word Carson spoke, every movement he made, was carefully crafted to send a message. I wondered if he’d used the same tactics on Tim all those years ago.
“The flashbacks are going to keep happening. You may think you’ve managed to pull yourself together, but you haven’t. Soon you’ll shut down completely—and what will you do then? How are you going to protect yourself when you’ve regressed to the state you were in when we met?” Carson’s voice got hard and low. “Don’t ever forget how that cop looked at you when he found you in that basement, crouching over his partner’s dead body while akiller ran free. Or how you felt when you saw the gun just lying there and made the conscious decision to let an unconscionable monster walk. You could have stopped him. Given the families of those poor girls some peace. But you didn’t, Shay. You let him go.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Come home,” Carson said, softly now. “We’ll work through this, just like we did before. I’ll make it right. I always do.”
The speech was exactly what I expected from Carson. If I’d been just a smidge weaker, it might have worked.
“Tell me about Moonshine Phil.”
It was the question I’d been waiting to ask, and just as I’d hoped, it caught him off guard. It took longer than it should have for him to recover. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” he said. His laugh was synthetic, a cheap simulation of the real thing. “My ears are burning. Have you and Tim been gossiping behind my back? Don’t tell me you never broke the rules to have some fun.”
“Sure I did. But I never made a friend break the law. Philip Norton. He’s a local, like you. What do you know about his family?”
“What are you even talking about? I bought booze from the guy twenty years ago. What does any of this have to do with us? Christ,” he said after a beat, “this is Tim, too, isn’t it? What, is this Norton guy a suspect or something? Is Timmy trying to convince you I was friends with a criminal now?”
“You’re the one who negotiated that liquor deal. Did he talk about his family or not?”
“How am I supposed to remember that? We talked one time to set things up and Tim did the rest. You ask me, Tim was nuts to go anywhere near him. The pervert had a thing for young boys.”
“What? How could you know that?”
“I saw him around town a couple of times with a kid about our age. He wasn’t from our school. What does it matter? Moonshine Phil was a nobody. Just like Tim.”
“Tim,” I repeated, livid. “You could have ruined his career, his whole fucking life.” I suddenly remembered our text conversation, Carson’s abrupt decision to freeze Tim out. “That’s why you changed your mind about inviting him to the wedding. You’re afraid of what he’ll tell me about how you treated him.”
“Shana.” Carson loaded my name with displeasure, turned it into a reprimand. “If I was concerned about Tim Wellington, if I spent even a millisecond of my time thinking about what harebrained stories a pathetic, small-town cop might tell you about me, don’t you think I’d ban him from the guest list from the start? Wouldn’t I have explained myself preemptively if I thought he might try to bad-mouth me to my fiancée? You’ve been with the man almost every day for the past several months. If he had any power over me, believe me, he would have used it.”
Tim hadn’t fully understood why Carson wanted him at our wedding in the first place, but I saw now his hunch was spot on. Tim grew up to become a cop. An upstanding person who did the right thing. And Carson was afraid. The wedding invitation was a pseudo peace offering, a false message to Tim that Carson had changed. With it, virtuous boy that Tim was, he wouldn’t dream of disrupting our relationship.
