In the living room, her father lifted his shaking hand for her to hold.
Lucinda sat on the edge of the couch across from him. She did not take his hand.
He set his hand back down, made a slurping sound with the corner of his mouth.
The living room was ferociously hot and airless, and Lucinda felt as though she were trapped in a forge.
She took her smartphone from her pocket, pressed her finger on the record app. She cleared her throat, sat straight, chin up. “This is Town of Ivers Deputy Sheriff Lucinda Welch, recording suspect Maurice Welch, November 12, two thousand twelve, at ten thirty-five a.m., in the home of Maurice Welch.”
Lucinda looked at the photo behind her father on the wall, of her and Sally on the tire swing, smiling madly.
“It happened here,” Lucinda said.
Her father did not speak or nod, but his eyes confirmed the story the bones in the basement told.
“Please, speak for the record,” Lucinda said.
“Yes. Here.”
Lucinda did not need his confirmation. She knew it had happened here, right here in her home. Her friend and her friend’s mother had been killed in this house, her childhood home, and had been down in the cellar all these years while Lucinda had been stricken with sorrow and bewilderment and fear. In the past hour, Lucinda had read enough of the diary—Mrs. B.’s diary—she’d found in the trunk to piece together the background to the days leading to the disappearances. The murders. The motive and the scenario were clear now in her mind, even as they muddied her soul to think of them, to think this of her father. Know this about him.
“The photos. The faces scratched out, Jonah Baum’s face. Jealousy. All this, from jealousy.”
Her father shook his head.
“Speak for the record,” Lucinda said. “Jealousy was the motive.”
“Yes,” her father said. “And no.”
“Please, clarify. Was it or not?”
“Not jealous. Humiliated. She came here. She and her daughter.”
“Sally. Sally Baum. You can say her name. Sally. And her mother, Rebecca Baum.”
“Yes. Them.”
“Why did she come here?”
“She was upset. Afraid.” His breath whistled.
“Of what?” Lucinda knew the truth, knew what, who, Rebecca had become afraid of in those last days.
“Of him. Jonah.” Lucinda’s father sipped air in tiny gasps. Grimaced.
“The photos. Jonah’s face mauled by a pen. You did that. Yet she was afraid of Jonah?”
“You know his temper.”
“Tell the truth.”
Her father licked his dry, peeling lips. “The truth. She was mine. First. I came from the good family. Me. He. Stole her. She came to me. She was afraid.”
“And what happened?” Lucinda steeled herself against the words this man was saying. The lies. This father who’d had a lovely wife and adopted daughter he never treated as anything but his own, with love and tenderness. What had he thought, that he’d just leave Lucinda and her mother, run off to some fairy-tale life? Abandon them and . . . what?
He gritted his teeth, strained to breathe. “You judge. But. You. Kirk. You are always tempted to go back. I see it.”
“You don’t see anything.” How dare he use her as means to justify what he’d done. Her father was manipulating her. She felt it in her belly like the twist of a knife, his lying about the specifics. Shading the truth. She was certain. When did it stop, her being manipulated by men, however calculated and selfish, or unconscious and well intentioned, their attempts?
Her father hacked up phlegm on the cuff of his pajama top, phlegm tainted with blood.
“What did you do to them? What did you do to my friend?”
“She feared what he might do.” His voice splintered.
“She did,” Lucinda said. Just not the way you want me to believe it. “Go on.”
“I told her. Stay. I’d take care of her. She got—”
“What?”
“Hysterical.”
“Oh, hysterical.” Lucinda felt numbed with disbelief, disembodied, and her voice seemed to come from somewhere, someone else.
“She was off her meds,” her father said. “She could get . . . She swung at me. I—defended. A man can’t.”
And what did you do to make her swing at you? Lucinda thought.
“I grabbed a knife.”
Lucinda could barely find the breath to speak. She felt weak, and so tired. Vanquished. “Sally? What’d you do to my friend?”
“You don’t”—he coughed, hacked up phlegm—“want to know.”
“The law wants to know. It needs to know who and how and why.”
Her father bit his lower lip, drawing blood. He licked at the bead of blood, put a frail fingertip to it. “She started crying. Crazy. Like her mother.”
“A girl. Crazy.”
“No control.”
Lucinda could imagine Sally frenzied, from terror. Lucinda could bear no more. She stood.
“Accident,” her father pleaded, desperate. “That’s the truth.”
“Lies,” Lucinda said. “Sally’s mom was not afraid of Jonah. Not in the way you make it seem. You’d begun to hound her.”
“Not true, I—”
“I read it in her own words in the diary from the trunk. The diary you stole. You went back to her house and took it. Where was it?”
“Nightstand.”
“Why’d you keep it?”
“It was hers. Her thoughts. Her handwriting.”
“Why, after so many years, did you start to hound her? Obsess over her? You were friends. You and her and Jonah. And Mom. All of you. Why?”
Her father closed his eyes as if mulling options for answering the question. He opened his eyes.
“Sometimes. An itch. Can’t ignore anymore. You scratch. It helps. But. Then. You scratch and scratch and scratch.” He shook his head, drool shining on his chin. “It gets raw. Starts to bleed. Fester. Becomes a sore.”
“She came here once to reason with you to leave her be,” Lucinda said. “Told you to stop. But you made wild threats and spouted terrible things. That Sally should have been your daughter. Your natural daughter. The real daughter you should have had.” Lucinda’s voice trailed as her words skewered her.
“That’s not. I didn’t. Mean that. I was—”
“But you backed off that time because Sally had stopped by to see me, let herself in without knocking, as we always did. I wasn’t home and neither was Mom, and Sally heard you saying awful things to Mrs. B. before either of you heard her crying in the living room. That’s why Sally drew those pictures. Because of your ugliness. Because of how much your threats to her mom scared her. Sally and Rebecca were both afraid of you.”
“Yes,” her father said.
“You backed down that first time to calm Sally. So Sally wouldn’t tell me. Or her dad. You gave Sally my doll to calm her and she took her home. Baby Beverly. You swore Sally to secrecy. Her mom swore her to secrecy. Because she knew Jonah’s temper. She was afraid of it, not at it being directed at her. But at you. He was suspicious she was seeing someone. His suspicions were taking their toll on them. She swore she wasn’t seeing anyone, there was no one for her except Jonah. And it was true. She wrote that in her diary. There was no one else. Despite their problems. But he wasn’t convinced, he knew something was off, wrong, felt her tension and secrecy. Because it existed, just not the way he imagined. She couldn’t come clean, she couldn’t tell him it was you. Bothering her. She feared what he’d do and knew it would crush him. She hoped she could get you to see reason.”
“Love knows no reason,” her father whispered.
Lucinda tried to ignore the lacerating, delusional words.
“When Mrs. B. found Sally’s drawings, and forced Sally to tell her about a man in the woods, Mrs. B. came back the morning Jonah left early for campus,” Lucinda said. “She brought Sally. I don’t know why. Maybe she thought you’d see the damage you were doing if you saw Sally’s face. Maybe it was to have a witness there to keep you in check. Maybe because Sally had been feeling sick the day before and was sick that morning. But you were the one who followed Sally in the woods. Her and me. Do I have that right?”
He swallowed, winced, as if swallowing shards of glass. “Yes,” he said. “But—”
“But what?”
“It was an accident.”
“And Mom, falling down the stairs. Was that an accident?”
“You,” he barked, his voice so much louder than she’d heard it in years it made her jump. “How dare you.”
Lucinda turned to leave.
“You’re my daughter,” her father gasped. “No one else. I was mad. When I said that. I was—”
“I’m not here in the capacity of your daughter. I’m here in the capacity of a deputy sheriff. The state police will handle you from here.”
“I want . . . to see him. Jonah.”
She spun on him. “Why? To hurt him even more?”
“To tell him the truth. Myself. To his face.”