By one A.M., Guthrie still hadn’t slept. He’d eaten too much, that was a given, but it was more than that. Kira might be sleeping peacefully across the hall, but, ironically, it was her nightmare that was keeping him awake. Maybe he was being too sensitive, looking for clues to prove something that had never happened. Was it really possible that someone in Kira’s family had murdered her mother?
Kira’s father, Kevin, was a friendly, straightforward kind of guy. He’d spent time in the military—had served in the first Gulf War. There was a picture of him in his army uniform on the piano. As a young man, he’d been movie-star handsome—wavy brown hair, strong square chin, broad shoulders, and a confident, cocky grin. He looked much the same today, though his hair was shaggier and shot through with gray. He swore like a man who’d served in the army, and yet there was a sweetness about him, an empathetic appreciation of the others at the dinner table.
Guthrie’s mother had once pointed out to him that people rarely asked questions of other people. Mostly, they waited around for a chance to talk about themselves. She told him that when he found someone who asked questions and actually listened to the answers, that he’d found a rare soul indeed. Kevin Adler was like that.
Hannah was an arch personality, liked to tease, to sit back and make acerbic comments. Doug had clearly staked out the position of family intellectual and curmudgeon. He was animated, opinionated, and surreptitiously downed hefty sips from a thin silver flask he kept secreted in the inside pocket of his sport coat. He also partook liberally of the Irish whiskey and Chardonnay Kevin had brought with him—his contribution to the meal. While Doug never seemed drunk, he clearly kept himself on the edge of inebriation throughout the day. Occasionally, he would slip in a comment that was so breathtakingly bitter, it brought all conversation to a halt.
As for Laurie, Doug’s wife, Kira’s assessment of her seemed accurate. She spoke very little during dinner. When she wasn’t looking down, picking at her food, her attention was focused on Kevin or Doug. There was a lot more to her than met the eye—Guthrie was sure of it. She wasn’t quiet because she had nothing to say.
Of all the people who’d been at the table, Guthrie liked Evangeline the best. She was warm and loving, and made every attempt to include Guthrie in the conversation. She might not allow two young unmarried people to sleep together under her roof, but she made no conspicuous show of her religious beliefs either. And she loved tea.
Like Guthrie’s own family, Kira’s had a hierarchy and its own kind of heartbeat. Because Guthrie had grown up with a drug-addicted mother and a father who steadfastly refused to believe he had a right to his own feelings and opinions, he’d learned early on to listen for subtext. Words weren’t only used to communicate, they could also obscure. Beyond words, the truth of any interaction often lay in what wasn’t said, in the emotions that underpinned whatever subject was on the table. Deciphering his parents had always given Guthrie a splitting headache. He’d been hoping that Kira’s family would be a more easygoing group—what you saw was what you got. It was probably asking too much.
Slipping out of bed, Guthrie grabbed his bathrobe and headed out to the hallway in search of a bottle of Maalox, or failing that, something fizzy to drink. He rummaged through the medicine cabinet in the second-floor bathroom, but finding nothing, he tiptoed toward the stairs. He didn’t want to wake the sleeping family.
Before he got halfway down, he heard voices in the kitchen. The stair treads creaked under his weight, so he stopped, wondering if whoever was in there had heard him. When they continued, he sat down to listen.
Kevin and Doug appeared to be the only two people in the room.
“You didn’t vote?” said Doug’s voice. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Didn’t like any of the candidates,” replied Kevin. “So what would have been the point?”
“The point? What’s the point?”
“I’m not up for an argument, Dougie.”
“Don’t call me Dougie. You don’t deserve citizenship in this country if you don’t vote.”
“Back the hell off or I’ll take my bottle of Jameson and drink it somewhere else.”
Doug muttered. “I’m just saying—”
“Doug.”
“All right, all right. Jesus.”
They stayed quiet for a few minutes.
Guthrie was ready to head back up to his bed when Doug said, “You must really like working with Laurie.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because sometimes she doesn’t get home until four in the morning.”
“We do cleanup after we close the bar.”
“For two hours?”
“Sometimes we sit down and have a beer together. You got a problem with that?”
“Maybe.”
“Meaning what?”
“Hell, Kevin. You sleep with half the women in this town. Can’t you leave my wife alone?”
“Oh Lord. I should have known you’d think that. It’s not happening.”
“No?”
“No. If you got problems in your marriage, it’s not because of me.”
Doug grunted.
More clinking glasses.
“Since we’re on the subject of my wife,” said Doug, his gravelly voice starting to slur, “I have to say, she kind of surprised me. She’s usually so quiet. When I see her behind the bar, it’s like she’s had a personality transplant.”
“She’s quiet around you, asshole, because you suck up all the air in the room.”
“You are so full of it.” Chair legs scraped against linoleum.
“You wanna fight, Doug, or you wanna drink?”
Guthrie waited for the brawl to begin. Instead, he heard the sound of wood creaking as Doug resumed his chair. After that, neither man spoke for a while.
Finally, Doug muttered, “All the beds in this house should be taken out and burned. They’re so old they probably have fleas.”
“The price we pay,” said Kevin.
“We all know about paying prices.”
Kevin said nothing.
“I think … I … am officially drunk,” said Doug.
“I think you’ve been officially drunk all day.”
“Shut up. On my days off, I like to relax.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That kid,” continued Doug. “You ask me, he had a lot of nerve asking all those questions about Delia. I felt like we were being interrogated.”
“He’s head over heels for Kira,” said Kevin. “But yeah, he’s definitely the nosey type.”
Guthrie stiffened. He’d joined Doug and Kevin in the living room to watch the Green Bay game after dinner. Had he gone too far with his questions? After all, he and Kira were serious about each other. It stood to reason that he’d want to know about her mother.
“It just pisses me off,” said Doug. In a voice apparently meant to mimic Guthrie’s, he said, “Where’d you meet Delia? Was she depressed before she died? God, Kevin, I hope you weren’t the one who found her.”
“He doesn’t know jack shit,” said Kevin.
“Exactly,” said Doug. “We covered our tracks. End of story.”
“Except, it’s not the end. I’m not sure it will ever end.”
A wave of apprehension rolled through Guthrie’s chest. Covered our tracks? What did they mean by that?
A new voice was added to the mix. Hannah’s bedroom was on the first floor. Guthrie hadn’t heard her moving around downstairs, but suddenly she said, “What are you boys talking about at this hour?”
“The usual,” said Kevin.
“You gonna share that whiskey?”
When Guthrie heard chair legs scraping the linoleum again, he assumed that Hannah had joined them at the table. He was so freaked at how easily he might be caught eavesdropping from the stairs that he got up and headed back to his room. How could he ever tell Kira what he’d just heard, especially since nothing had been explicitly stated? Would she really want to know if her family was responsible for her mother’s death—or, at the very least, was keeping some aspect of the death a secret?
If Guthrie took a cold, pragmatic approach, he supposed Delia’s passing, however it happened, could be considered water under the bridge, unlikely to have any impact on Kira’s life today. And yet, he knew himself well enough to realize that if he and Kira got married—and he was planning to pop the question on Christmas Eve—it was a scab he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from picking. Even more worrisome was the fact that Kevin Adler knew that he was more interested in Delia’s death than he had any right to be. That had been Guthrie’s mistake, though there was nothing to be done about it now.
This trip hadn’t turned out to be the kind of up close and personal he’d been looking forward to with the Adler family. He’d be a fool if he didn’t wonder, now that he’d linked his life with Kira’s, what kind of a hornet’s nest he’d just stepped into.