Connor’s fingers tightened around mine. For a few seconds I didn’t reply — couldn’t reply. At last I took in a breath, then asked, “And how do you know it’s the right time…or even that I’m the person to do it?”
A short silence as my father folded his hands on the knee of his well-worn cargo pants. Clearly, he was waiting for the older man to speak. And how strange that I’d already started thinking of Andre Wilcox as my father, when I still couldn’t make myself admit to any kind of real relation to my grandmother.
The old man did reply eventually, bright black eyes fixed on my face. “Many years we’ve waited. It is no easy thing, to wait and watch, knowing the time will come eventually but also knowing we can do nothing to hasten its coming.”
“What time?” Connor asked. “What were you waiting for?” His gaze shifted to my father, then hardened. “Was it worth leaving Angela with no father all these years?”
I could see my father’s mouth compress slightly, deepening the laugh lines that bracketed it, but his voice was calm as he replied, “And do you truly think the McAllisters would have accepted a Wilcox as the father of their future prima?”
Good question, one whose answer was most likely hell, no. I honestly didn’t know quite what my family would’ve done if Andre Wilcox — or Begonie, I supposed, since I got the impression he’d been using that name for a while — had shown up out of the blue and tried to claim me back when I was still a minor. They were less than thrilled now, but at least that particular truth hadn’t come out until I had already inherited the prima gifts. Would they have tried to find an alternate for me after they realized I was tainted with Wilcox blood? Was that even possible? I’d never heard of the prima-in-waiting being passed over for another candidate once she’d been identified, but it had to have happened once or twice over the years because of sickness or an accident or some other twist of fate.
“Probably not,” I admitted to my father, after a hesitation I was pretty sure everyone noticed.
“Many times I’ve had to counsel patience,” the old man said in his slow, deep voice. “Andre knew what was at stake, and yet he chafed at the waiting, wishing he could go to you.”
“With all due respect,” Connor cut in, “maybe you could explain that a bit better. You expect Angela to break the curse? Why her?”
“Because it was this purpose for which she was born.”
I looked from the old man — whose name I still didn’t know — to my father, who was regarding me with a deep sadness in his eyes. At first I couldn’t quite figure out where that sadness had come from, but then the realization seemed to bubble up from somewhere deep inside me, perhaps the well of knowledge that seemed to be joined to my growing powers.
“That’s why you went to California, isn’t it?” I whispered.
He nodded, the sadness now tinged with pride. “Yes. Lawrence, my great-uncle” — he nodded toward the old man, and I realized how old Lawrence must be if he truly was my great-great-uncle — “told me of what he had seen in the movements of the stars, what he’d heard in the wind. The time was coming when at last the curse could be broken, but only if I could turn away from the woman of my heart and go to the one who was destined to bear the curse-breaker. That child needed to be born of a witch with the strength to be prima, even though your mother had denied what was supposed to be her own destiny.”
The woman of his heart. That would be Marie Wilcox, I supposed. “So, what…you just dumped Marie and shacked up with my mother to fulfill a prophecy?”
A wince, but he didn’t look away from me, didn’t try to deny it. “I had to think of the greater good. And your mother was a lovely woman, full of her own strength and fire. I couldn’t love her the way I loved Marie, but I did care for her.”
Pretty words. I wasn’t sure I believed them, though. How could I believe them?
Actually, in that moment I wasn’t sure what I did believe.
“Well, this all sounds very noble,” Connor said, and I could hear the edge of disbelief in his voice as well. “But…why? I mean, we Wilcoxes didn’t do so well by the Navajo back in the day. So why should you care whether the curse continues or not?”
Lawrence’s piercing dark gaze rested on Connor for a moment, and then he smiled for the first time, showing teeth so straight and white I guessed they had to be false. “The sort of question a Wilcox would ask, I suppose. So little trust among you, even now, when you are the masters of your own kingdom down there in Flagstaff.” Beside me, Connor stiffened, but the old man appeared not to notice. “You ask why. I will tell you it is because the order, the balance of things, has been upset, and must be righted. Whatever happened all those years ago, it was between Nizhoni and Jeremiah Wilcox, and should have stayed between them. What she did brought dishonor upon all of us, using her gifts in such a way.”
“Nizhoni?” I repeated. “That was her name — the Navajo woman Jeremiah married, I mean?”
“Yes, Nizhoni was of the Diné, although she came to live with the Wilcoxes.”
“Deen-eh?” I questioned, sounding it out.
“The true name of the Navajo,” my father said quietly.
My head was spinning. Maybe in time I’d be able to absorb all this, but right now I was starting to feel more than a little overloaded. “Okay,” I said. “So you think I’m the one to break the curse. How exactly am I supposed to do that? I mean, Damon Wilcox failed miserably at it, and he was a hell of a lot smarter than I can ever hope to be.”
“He was intelligent, but he was not wise,” Lawrence replied calmly. “He thought to use power for his own ends, and showed no respect for the ways of others. He was warned, but he did not listen. I do not think you are as foolish.”
Connor shifted, the leather couch creaking under his weight. Although he didn’t say anything, I could tell that Lawrence’s words had upset him; he released my hand and crossed his arms, a scowl pulling at his brow despite his best efforts to erase it.
“You may try to defend your brother, if you wish,” the old man said, apparently missing none of this. “But you know in your heart of hearts that what I say is true.” Incongruously, his eyes twinkled. “And it is also true that you will make a far better primus than he.”
“Leaving that aside for now,” I broke in, since I could tell that my great-great-uncle’s remark had done nothing to mollify Connor…rather, the reverse, “could you share a little of your wisdom with me and help me understand how this curse-breaking is supposed to work?”
“You already know, even though you think you don’t,” the old man told me. “But the power is waking in you. Did you ever wonder why it was that you could speak with ghosts? Nizhoni is not a ghost, precisely — not in the way you might think, not like the earthbound spirits who have been your companions since you were a child. But her soul is a restless one, trapped on this plane, the strength of her ill will ensuring that the curse continues, generation after generation. You must convince her that it is time to move on. When her soul ascends, the curse will be broken, since she will no longer exist on this plane.”
Convince her that it is time to move on. His words shook me, because that was exactly what I’d done with Mary Mullen. However, it was one thing to convince sweet Mary, already missing her husband and children, that it was time for her to finally go and join them, and quite another to do the same thing with this Nizhoni, whose hurt and anger and sorrow had fueled a curse that had lasted for many generations. Also, Mary had always come to me; I’d never been forced to seek her out.
“Okay,” I said at length. “I suppose that makes some sense. Any idea where this Nizhoni might be hanging out so we can have a chat?”
At my question, my father shook his head, and Lawrence let out a rusty chuckle. “Angela, you know it is not that easy. She is not haunting any one place, but rather is all around us.”
“Well, unless you can tell me how to pin her down somehow, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to make this work. I’m used to dealing with regular garden-variety ghosts. They all have their particular haunts, so to speak.”
Apparently unperturbed, the old man responded, “Soon the time will come when the veil between the worlds will thin, and you will use the power of the longest day to give you the strength to approach her on her own ground.”
By “longest day,” I had to assume he meant the solstice, now less than two weeks away. I opened my mouth to confirm this, but he had already moved on, saying,
“Not only is it the solstice, but it is also a new moon. Many years will pass before such a combination comes again. In the time of the dark moon, you will meet with Nizhoni, and use your powers to convince her to move on to the next world. This is what I have seen, and what I know will come to pass.”
It must be nice to have that kind of confidence. Personally, I wasn’t feeling it, but I couldn’t deny the potent combination of the summer solstice, with its power of the light, joining with a new moon and its shadowy strength. Would it be enough to propel me into the dark world of the spirits, to the place where Nizhoni’s tormented soul had wandered all these years?
Instinctively, my hand moved to my belly, as if to protect the two tiny souls that lived within me and who depended on me for everything. What would happen to them if I failed, if somehow I remained imprisoned in the same limbo that had trapped Nizhoni for more than a century?
“Yes, you risk much,” Lawrence said, apparently catching my gesture. “But the reward will be all the greater — that you will be here to see these two grow up, and the ones to come after them. No longer will the Wilcox clan experience grief at imminent death mingled with the joy of knowing a new primus has been born to them. It is a time for healing. You have already begun it, with this mingling of McAllister and Wilcox. Yes, the blood of those two clans was joined in you as well, but this is different. This is no secret, but an open bond between the prima of the McAllisters and the primus of the Wilcox. To you, progress may still feel slow, but sometimes it is the tiniest of breaches that bring a great dam tumbling down.”
I didn’t bother to ask how he knew the struggles I’d been facing, trying to convince my clan that things would be very different from now on. True, the McAllisters didn’t have a seer, but I’d seen Marie’s powers in this area, and Lawrence’s seemed to be even greater than hers. Clearly he knew what had been happening in my own world. For all I knew, he’d been watching over me for years, relaying that information to my father so at least he’d know I was well, and thriving.
“Yeah, it’s easy for you to ask her to risk her life and that of her unborn children,” Connor snapped. His green eyes were narrowed, and I could tell by the way his fingers were clutching the edge of the worn leather sofa that he was doing so to keep himself from launching right off that couch and getting in the old man’s face. “You get to sit on the sidelines and wait to see what happens. But you’re asking too much of her.”
“Of course your instinct is to protect her. This is good. But would you really prevent her from making the attempt when you know it is the only thing that will guarantee you two can grow old together? Don’t let fear rule you, Connor Wilcox, as that same fear can only lead to you stopping Angela from doing this…which means you will be looking for a new mother for your children in a year or two.”
“Son of a bitch — ” Connor began, and actually began to rise from the sofa. I reached up to grasp his wrist, even as my father looked at me and said quietly,
“Angela, this is your choice. We can’t make you do it. On the other hand, Connor can’t stop you if you decide to take the risk. Just — ” He paused and reached up to grasp the turquoise amulet he wore on a brown leather thong around his throat. “Just remember how much suffering this curse has already caused. Think of what we’ve all done to get to this point.”
How could I forget, when I knew I’d be another one of those Wilcox wives gone too soon into the dark if something didn’t change? Connor subsided but watched me with anguished eyes. Possibly he was in the worst situation of all, knowing that I would surely die if I didn’t break the curse, but also understanding that I risked not only myself but the twins if my attempt failed. If that happened, he would lose everything.
Oh, Goddess, I moaned to myself, not knowing what I should do. I was only one person, but if I should lose the twins….
It was as if she had spoken within me. The worst thing to do is to do nothing at all.
But was it, truly? Even if I died, the twins would live.
But they are still only two. What of all the others to come after you, generation after generation, if this curse is not ended now?
Harsh logic, the kind I wished I could ignore. I couldn’t, though. Not and live with myself. If all the signs and portents had pointed to me, pointed to this one particular day, then I had better do them proud and give Nizhoni the talking-to she so clearly deserved.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do whatever I can. But I hope you’re up to giving me some coaching, because I really have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”
Connor slumped beside me, face blank. I could read the defeat and worry in every line of his body, and I reached out and took his hand in mine.
“They’re right,” I said softly. “This has to end. We’re scared. It’s okay to be scared. But we can’t let it stop us. Do you really want our children and our children’s children to go through this all over again, generation after generation, with no end in sight?”
Raising his head, he stared at me for a long moment. We could’ve been the only two people in the room, although I was dimly aware of Lawrence and my father sitting still and quiet, waiting for us to work this through on our own.
“No,” Connor said at last. “I don’t. I want this to end.”
“Do you trust me?” I asked him, an echo of a question he’d asked me so many months ago.
His fingers, strong and warm, squeezed mine in return. “Yes, I trust you.”
After that the atmosphere became a little more relaxed, my father getting up from his chair to fetch us some long-overdue water, Connor leaning against the back of the couch, looking as drained as if he’d just run a marathon. But I knew he wouldn’t fight me on this any longer, had realized we couldn’t let this singular opportunity slip by.
As my father came back with two tall glasses incongruously decorated with strawberries — probably a thrift store or yard sale purchase — Lawrence said, “You asked for my instruction. I can assist you with this part at least, help train you in the sort of meditation that will help you when it comes time to walk the paths of the otherworld.”
“Today?” I asked faintly. Even though we’d probably been here no more than half an hour, I was already feeling drained, brain and body exhausted by the revelations Lawrence and my father had just shared.
Lawrence smiled in understanding. “No, you are tired. You can come back in a day or two. We have a little time, and I can tell that your mind needs its rest.”
After taking another sip of his ice water, Connor murmured to me, “So do you want to go?”
I shook my head. “Not quite yet,” I replied in the same undertone. The water glass was sweating under my fingers, the humidity in here higher than it would be in a house with regular air conditioning rather than this swamp cooler. I drank as well, glad of the cold fluid coursing down my throat. Raising my voice a little, I said, “I’d really like to talk to my father in private.”
It turned out that the house where we’d been talking was Lawrence’s, and the other one belonged to my father. I wasn’t sure if he actually owned it or not, or whether they were both technically Lawrence’s and my father just lived there. Their setup probably wasn’t all that formal.
After Connor gave me a quick encouraging squeeze of my hand, letting me know it was okay for me to leave him for a few minutes, my father and I emerged into the blistering heat and then went into the house that was his.
Here, too, the swamp cooler was blasting away, but the windows only had thin paper shades, so it felt much brighter than the other house. The furniture looked newer, too, although still plain — a couch and chair covered in plain brown canvas, Navajo rugs on the floor.
Actually, it reminded me of Marie’s house, although much smaller, of course. Maybe those two really had been meant to be together.
Thinking of that just made me uncomfortable, though, because it reminded me of how artificial my father’s relationship with my mother actually had been. He’d said he’d come to care for her, but how much of that feeling was good old-fashioned guilt?
I paused, standing in the middle of the living room.
“Some more water?” my father asked.
“No, thanks.” Now that we were alone together, I began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. The tension between us seemed thick enough that it lay as heavy as the heat outside on my skin. I pulled in a breath, then said, “What did you fight about?”
“Excuse me?”
Since I’d asked the question out of nowhere, I supposed his look of bewilderment was understandable. “We talked with Linda Sanderson, the woman who lived next door to you in Newport Beach back when you were…with my mother. She said you two had a huge fight a few days before I was born, and that you drove off and didn’t come back. So what was the fight about?”
He pushed up his sleeves, a nervous gesture, since they weren’t in any danger of sliding back down past his elbows. “Linda. I hadn’t thought about her in years. She’s still in the same house?”
“Yes. I got the address of the place you and my mother were renting from my birth certificate. Connor and I drove out there, looking for answers.”
Like me, my father was sort of hovering in the middle of the room, ignoring the couches and chair as if they weren’t even there. At last he said, “We fought because your mother found out about Marie.”
“So my mother didn’t know anything? Who did she think you were?” What lies did you tell her? was my unspoken question, and from the twist of my father’s mouth, I got the impression he’d picked up on the unvoiced query loud and clear.
“She thought I was one of the Santiagos.”
“Because that’s what you told her.”
“Yes.”
“And none of the real Santiagos figured out that there was a Wilcox living in their midst?”
The hazel eyes, so similar in shape to my own, were full of anguish. “Things are bad now in California, but they were bad then, too. So many witches and warlocks coming there without permission, and the Santiagos trying to police them all — well, let’s just say I slipped in under the radar. Of course I knew better than to use my powers, do anything to attract attention. Lawrence had seen your mother going to Newport Beach, and that’s where I found her. She was standing on the sand, watching the sunset. Most of the other girls on the beach were wearing bikinis or tank tops and shorts, but Sonya, she had on a pale blue sundress and her hair was blowing in the breeze.” He paused then, obviously attempting to choose the right words. “I guess I hadn’t expected her to be that pretty.”
So she had been, at least from the few photos I’d seen of her. Had he looked at her, that day on the beach so long ago, and thought perhaps the duty he’d been tasked with carrying out wouldn’t be quite as bad as he feared?
“So you…hooked up.”
A frown touched his mouth. “Well, that’s not what people called it back then, but…yes. Not that she needed much persuading. It was as if she’d gone there determined to lose her virginity at the earliest opportunity.”
As much as I really didn’t want to think that about my mother, I knew it was only the truth. The best way to avoid bonding with her consort and becoming prima was to throw away that virginity as soon as she could. No one in Jerome or Cottonwood or Clarkdale would have touched her, knowing what was at stake, but a handsome stranger she met on a beach in California was a completely different story.
“And so….”
“And so…we were together. She was staying in a little motel down on the peninsula. We spent a few weeks there, and then we thought we’d try renting a house together.”
“Her idea or yours?” I asked, knowing the question had come out more sharply than I’d intended.
He didn’t blink. “Mine. To be honest, I don’t think she had a real plan. She’d gotten away, gotten out, and made damn sure she wouldn’t be the McAllisters’ newest prima. Maybe in her head she’d thought she would just go back to Jerome after that. But she was having fun in Newport and decided she might as well stay for a while. And then….” The words died away, but I knew what he’d been about to say.
“Then she got pregnant.”
“Yes. And we were together, and I didn’t see that changing anytime soon. Lawrence hadn’t been all that clear on exactly how everything was supposed to pan out, whether I was supposed to stay with Sonya, be with her to raise our child or what, so I had to wait and see how things developed. We were doing pretty well, until the argument.”
“Yeah, that.” I hooked my thumbs in my belt and shifted my weight to one leg, considering him. My father’s expression was still troubled, although that could have simply been from dredging up memories he would rather have forgotten. “How did she find out? I mean, obviously you kept things secret for a good chunk of time, considering you had that blow-out only a few days before I was born.”
“I got sloppy.” He didn’t exactly sigh, but his lips parted slightly, the slightest gust of breath escaping them. “It was right before Yule, of course, right before the holidays. I did care about your mother, but I’d loved Marie since I was barely fifteen years old. I’d brought a picture of her with me, one I kept hidden in my wallet. Your mother wasn’t the nosy type, so it wasn’t as if she was snooping or anything like that. But I’d pulled out the picture to look at it, wondering what Marie would be doing back in Flagstaff, with the two of us so far apart for the holidays, and your mother walked into the bedroom and saw me holding it. Naturally she wanted to know who it was. I tried to shrug it off, say it was a cousin — which wasn’t even a lie, of course — but she could tell I wasn’t telling the whole truth. Funny how she saw through that one, when I’d managed to convince her I was a Santiago for all those months.”
“So she never knew you were a Wilcox?”
“No. She thought I’d been cheating on her. I tried to explain that I hadn’t seen Marie for almost a year, but she didn’t believe me, said if that were really true, then I wouldn’t be carrying around another woman’s picture. And the more I tried to talk to her, the more upset she got. She didn’t want to listen. It almost felt as if she wanted an excuse to get rid of me.”
“Why would she feel that way?” I asked, sending him an accusing glance. Not that I really suspected him of doing anything worse than lying to her about who he was, but I had a hard time imagining a woman nine months pregnant who’d want to be left alone to have her baby by herself. Then again, my relationship with Connor was very different from whatever it was that my mother and Andre Wilcox had shared. Their entire history together was built on lies. Maybe Connor’s and my relationship had started out that way, but things had changed dramatically for us. I knew he would never lie to me again. I trusted him implicitly.
After a heavy pause, my father said, “I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she was tired of being out in California and wanted to go home to her family, and the only way she could think of to do that was without me. I think maybe she was scared about raising a child so far away from the support structure she knew. She did talk about her sister Rachel from time to time, almost as if she wished her sister was around so she could help with the baby and Sonya could get back to what she was best at — partying and having fun.” He stopped himself there, as if he were about to say more but didn’t want to be seen as maligning my mother to my face.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before, though. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “My Aunt Rachel has made it pretty clear what she thought of her my mother’s character flaws. And it’s not as if I’m going to nominate for sainthood someone who went out drinking only a few months after her baby was born and managed to get herself killed because she was riding on the back of a Harley with no helmet.”
“I am very sorry about that,” my father said quietly. “When Lawrence told me what happened, I wanted to go to Jerome, go fetch you and bring you back here, but he said that wasn’t right, that you would be the next prima, and as much as it hurt, I had to leave you to be raised by your McAllister relatives.”
He might have lied to my mother, but I could tell he wasn’t lying now. “And so…you just stayed out here, and took your grandmother’s family name? You never went back to Flagstaff?”
“Never. What I had done needed to be hidden from both the McAllister and Wilcox clans. I did send one note to my mother, so she would know I wasn’t dead…too.” The last word was tacked on, and I could tell how much it still bothered him that he hadn’t been there when his father had passed away, and had to stand by and do nothing while his mother turned her back on that part of her past, repudiating the witch clan her husband had come from.
“So…what have you been doing all this time?” Besides waiting, that is….
He gestured for me to follow him, and we left the living room and went down a short hallway. Through one open door I spied what must have been his bedroom, with a full-size bed and one dresser, and not much else. But our destination was the other bedroom, now turned into a workshop. I recognized the assortment of pliers on the large table, and the boxes of polished stones — mostly turquoise, with some coral and sugilite and lapis mixed in, and the long bands of silver and copper used for bezels in cabochon settings. There were also chunks of raw stones, which meant he probably did his own gem-cutting as well. His jewelry-making equipment was more elaborate than mine, though, since I could see he also had a kiln for lost-wax casting, something I’d never attempted. On the shelf were various carvings he’d done for ring and pendant settings; a few half-finished pieces still sat in the middle of the worktable, along with a ring that looked ready to be sold.
“You make jewelry?” I asked, trying not to sound too flabbergasted. After all, what were the odds that both my father and I would end up with the same vocation? “That’s amazing. I mean, I make jewelry, too.”
“I know,” he said.
Of course he did. He knew a good deal about me, whereas I knew hardly anything about him. But I was learning, and however I might fault him for staying away, no matter what any prophecy might say, I had to admit that he’d been very honest with me today, even when he knew some of the things he’d be telling me would put him in a bad light.
“Anyway, this was the trade I took up. I have some pieces down at the trading post, and the rest goes to the co-ops that run the roadside stands. It hasn’t made us rich, but the tourists like Navajo jewelry. They don’t need to know that I’m only a quarter Navajo.”
“It’s very beautiful,” I said. I took a few steps over to the table and then picked up the ring that sat there, a piece of beautiful pure blue Sleeping Beauty turquoise with a fine rope bezel and detailed flowers and leaves encircling the entire piece.
“It’s yours,” he said, coming to me and closing my fingers around the ring.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t — ”
“Angela,” he said quietly, and something in his tone made me stop and look up at him. His gaze was earnest, pleading. “I’ve done so little for you. Please, let me do this.”
My protests died on my lips. I nodded, and he let go of my hand, watching as I slipped the ring onto my middle finger. “Thank you.”
He smiled then, just a little, a smile that slipped away as he said, “I suppose we should go back so your fiancé doesn’t think you’ve completely abandoned him.”
“You’re probably right.”
So we headed back to Lawrence’s house, where Connor looked very relieved to see us. He shot a questioning look in my direction and I nodded slightly, indicating that I’d gotten some answers, if not all.
“Come back the day after tomorrow, and we’ll begin our work then,” Lawrence told me.
Although I knew it was important to be as prepared for the confrontation with Nizhoni as I possibly could, I wasn’t really looking forward to coming back out here, partly because I wasn’t sure what this “work” would really entail, and partly because I had a new house full of boxes that weren’t going to unpack themselves.
Now, there would be another handy magical skill to have.
But I promised I would be back on Tuesday afternoon, and after that Connor and I said our goodbyes and went back to the car. It wasn’t until we’d gone back through Cameron and were heading south on 89 toward Flagstaff that he asked,
“So, what do you think?”
I think my head’s beginning to hurt. But I said, “I think they’re telling us the truth. And my father was pretty honest about what really happened with my mother. I’m not saying I like it — finding out your father never loved your mother and was only with her to fulfill some sort of prophecy isn’t exactly fun. But my not liking it isn’t the same thing as not believing them. Because I do.”
Connor was silent for a bit, eyes fixed on the road. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the car, bringing out unexpected glints of copper and mahogany in his dark hair. Finally he spoke. “I get that feeling, too. And I kind of have to respect someone who’s patient enough to wait twenty-plus years for his plans to pan out. But still….” He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and rested it lightly on my thigh, as if to reassure himself that I really was sitting there next to him. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared about what’s coming next.”
“I know,” I told him. “I don’t even want to think about it. But somehow, knowing how patient they’ve been about waiting for the correct time to arrive, for me to grow up and be ready…well, in an odd way it actually helps. I’m not going to let them down…or us, either.”
His fingers tightened on my thigh, squeezing slightly. Then we went over a jarring bump, and he returned his hand to the steering wheel.
As I watched him, something struck me. “But you want to know what’s really strange?”
“Beyond what’s already happened?” he asked, mouth curling a bit.
“Yeah, beyond all that.” I mentally ran through the conversations with my father, both the one he and I shared in private, and what we’d discussed at Lawrence’s house. “In that whole time, my father didn’t ask one question about Marie. Not about where she was, or what she was doing. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd?”
Connor shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t sure how you would react to that kind of question, so he decided to leave it alone for now.”
Possibly, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.