It was an ordinary Saturday, the last she had planned for some time. Annalisa did laundry and studied the gardening book she’d checked out from the library. She liked to read it out loud to the plants, as if maybe they could chime in with their own advice. The house sitter she had booked for the next two weeks would no doubt do a better job, but she didn’t even care. Tomorrow Colin would swing into town, and they would embark on a tour of six European countries, starting with Paris, France. If they still liked each other at the end, then maybe there would be other trips in the future—the future she’d originally planned back when they had daydreamed together under the old oak tree in her backyard.
Her cell phone rang and she didn’t even jump. “Hey, Ma,” she said, flopping backward on the couch. “Before you ask, yes, I packed my toothbrush. And my underwear. And an umbrella.”
“What about toilet paper?”
“They have toilet paper in France, Ma.”
“I just worry about you.”
“I know you do,” she replied, feeling tender. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”
“I need you to do me a favor. I have a bunch of old clothes I need to drop off for the church rummage sale. Can you come sit with Pops for an hour? Alone, he’ll probably get hungry and climb the pantry cabinets for the cookies I hid on the top shelf. We’d find him on the floor with his thick skull split open like a melon.”
Annalisa sat up, suddenly uneasy. She hadn’t been alone with her father since Alex’s disclosure about the affair. “I don’t know.…”
“It’s just one hour. Then you’re gone for an entire month!”
“Two and a half weeks, Ma.” She bit her lip, deciding. “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll see you in a few.” She rehearsed her words on the drive over to her parents’ place. She would tell Pops she knew, say how foolish he’d been. A part of her still held out hope that he’d deny it all and somehow she could believe him. Alex had been roaring drunk the night of the Halloween party. He might have misconstrued an innocent exchange.
Her mother met her at the door. “There’s meatballs in the fridge,” she said, bussing Annalisa on the cheek. “Oh, and tuna salad. Plus, some pasta and a bowl of fruit.”
“Ma, you said you’d only be gone an hour.”
Her mother grabbed her large tote and went to the door. “He needs his medication at four P.M. Directions are on the kitchen table.”
“I’ve got it. Go.” Annalisa shooed her mother out the door. She found Pops sitting in the den watching golf from his special chair, the one where the seat rose up with the touch of a button to help him to his feet. He muted the TV when she came in.
“It’s my beautiful daughter,” he said, reaching for her with unsteady hands. “Come give Pops a k-kiss.”
“Hi, Pops.” She brushed his grizzled cheek with her lips and took a seat on a floral sofa that was at least as old as she was. “How’s your hip?”
“Titanium,” he said, patting it. “I’m bionic now.” He leaned over toward her. “Seeing how the guard is off duty, how about you and me have some ice cream?”
“Her car probably isn’t even out of sight yet.”
Pops grinned. “She is a good woman, but sh-she makes a lousy nurse.”
“She loves you,” Annalisa said with more bite than she’d intended. “She’s trying to take care of you.”
“Oh, I know. She thinks if I eat the right magic foods, I’ll live forever.” He shrugged. “Kale and spinach and all kinds of beans. I try to be good and eat what she puts in front of me, but I wonder if it really makes you live longer—or if it just seems that way.”
“I will get you some ice cream.” Annalisa fetched him a small dish of fudge swirl and then watched as he worked hard to eat it. His arm trembled as he held the spoon, and she could hardly believe this was the same man who’d once split firewood in the backyard. “Pops, I’ve got to ask you something.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s about Katie Duffy.”
He grunted. “C-case is closed now, thanks to you. May she rest in peace.”
“I’m asking about the time when she was alive. Rumor had it she was seeing someone.”
He stopped eating and wiped his mouth on a napkin. “That so?”
“Maybe a cop.”
“Who’s to say? Water under the bridge now.”
“Pops.” She waited until he looked at her, until she would be able to read the truth on his face. “Was it you?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. The pain in his dark eyes told her everything. Her stomach dropped to her knees, and she couldn’t say anything for a long minute.
“Oh, Pops,” she murmured, full of disappointment.
He could feel it, she saw. His shoulders sagged and he pushed aside the ice cream. “It was a mistake. The worst one I ever made.”
“How could you?”
“I didn’t plan it. Y-you have to understand, your ma and me got together when we were just kids. By that time, our lives were half over. You and your brothers were grown up. We’d spent years focused all on you and getting you ready for the world.”
“So now it’s our fault?”
“No. No, I don’t mean it like that. I just mean, we had our roles, her and me. Then you didn’t need us so much, but we didn’t know how to talk to each other like husband and wife anymore. Just Ma and Pops. It was routine.”
She sat forward, her head in her hands. Her face burned at his words. The very marriage she’d idolized all these years, the one she thought was built on love and devotion, he talked like it had been a shackle. A sham. “I thought you loved each other,” she whispered.
“We did. I do.” He clawed for her but she moved out of his reach. “I would die for your mother. She and you kids mean ev-everything to me.”
“Except when you were screwing Katie Duffy.” She looked up, glaring at him. “That was you who Lora Fitz saw that night, creeping around the Duffy house. Wasn’t it? That’s why you had to make her statement disappear, in case anyone ever tried to follow up with a sketch artist. God, Pops. You’re lucky they didn’t haul you in as the Lovelorn Killer.”
“I know that! Don’t you think I know that? It was stupid. Reckless. I’ve been sorry ever since.”
“Katie was pregnant when she died,” Annalisa said steadily. “Tell me it wasn’t yours.”
He looked even more miserable. “I … I don’t know. She couldn’t be sure.”
“I can’t believe you did this. What about Ma? Does she know?”
“No,” he said swiftly. “It would break her heart.”
“Nice of you to think of that now.”
He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “You’re angry. I don’t blame you. But it was a long time ago—a bad mistake that’s in the past. I ask you to forgive me. You’ve got to know how sorry I am and that I would do anything for you, for your mother, for any of your brothers. We are still a fa-family, and family is what really matters.”
“Convenient of you to say that now.”
“Now is when it’s finally over,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes.
She wasn’t as sure. “Pops, what about your stash in the attic?”
He looked at her. “What about it?”
“You can’t get up there anymore, but Ma can. Is there anything up there that could, you know, hurt her? Pictures? Letters?”
He frowned deeply. “There is one box.”
Her stomach lurched, but she made herself stand up and speak normally. “Tell me where it is. I’ll get rid of it.”
Relief colored his features, tears in his eyes. “You would do that for me?”
“I would do it for Ma. Like you say, it’s over now.”
“The box is in the back, behind the left gable. It is labeled TAXES, 1998.”
Annalisa left him to go up to the attic, disgust in her mouth. She considered burning the box without ever looking inside it. Summer heat greeted her like a crematorium as she opened the hatch and climbed into the stuffy attic. She picked her way through the boxes and old furniture until she found the one Pops had mentioned. Curiosity got the best of her, and she ripped off the tape holding it shut. Inside, she found several shoeboxes. The first held a letter in Katie’s handwriting, receipts from the Edgebrook Motel, and a Valentine’s Day card with a big red heart on the front. Darling, be mine. Her father’s signature was on the inside. Tears of fury rose up inside her and she choked back a sob. She wiped at her face with her bare arm but only succeeded in sliding dirt and grime across her cheek. She would have to wash or Ma would know she’d been up here.
She pulled out the second shoebox, and she froze when she saw the contents. The missing pages with Lora’s statement sat folded neatly on top. Underneath was the missing red silk scarf, the one used to strangle Katie. Her heart split open like it had been shot. She felt like she was dying inside. “Pops, no. No, no, no.” She bent over, a desperate groan escaping from her lips. She sat curled like that for a long time.
Eventually, she rose on unsteady legs and took the box with her back down to the den. Pops had the golf game turned up like usual. She stood in the doorway and let him see her streaked, dirty face. Let him see the horror in her eyes. “Pops,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
“Did you find it?” He clicked off the TV. “Hurry and get rid of it before your mother gets back.”
“Pops, what is this?” She fisted the scarf and held it up for him.
He stiffened as if struck. “Put that away.”
“This is what killed her. The scarf from her costume. Isn’t it? You took it from evidence.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, his hands moving fretfully on the arms of the chair. “Just leave it be. She’s gone. Nothing will bring her back now.”
“Did you kill her?” She took a step into the room. “Did you use the Lovelorn Killer as a cover to get rid of your mistake? Your pregnant neighbor? The wife of your best friend?”
“Stop this right now! You have no right to question me.”
She drew back, looking down on him with disgust. “Pops, I’m on the job now, remember? I have every right.”
“You going to turn me in? You’d do that to your own father? Over what? A red scarf that could’ve come from anywhere.”
“It didn’t, though. It came from Katie Duffy’s body. I bet the DNA evidence that you conveniently managed to circumvent will prove that’s true.”
“Anna, I’m begging you … let this go. For the family’s sake.”
“Hey, Pops!” She whirled as Alex entered the room wearing a Blackhawks shirt and a red bandana. He held a hammer in his hand. “Oh, hi, Annalisa. I thought that was your car outside. Pops, I came over to fix that broken step. Finally, huh?”
“Alex, this isn’t a great time,” Annalisa muttered.
“She’s right,” Pops said sharply. “Go home, Alex.”
He looked from one to the other, confused by the weird energy in the room. “What’s going on?” When they didn’t answer, his gaze drifted to the scarf in Annalisa’s hands. “Uh, Pops? Is that what I think it is?”
“I told you to go home.”
The color drained from Alex’s face. He pulled the bandana from his head. “What are you doing with that scarf, Anna?”
“She’s doing nothing with it,” Pops said. “Right, Anna?”
“I—” She looked down at the box in her hands. The missing report lay flat against one side, and she had removed the scarf, revealing a small packet of photos at the bottom. She took them out and saw they were from the Halloween party. There was one very similar to the shot she’d seen before, Katie Duffy smiling with Pop’s arm around her. Only this time you could see his face. She felt loathing now, looking at it, but she also realized something as she stood there holding the scarf: it wasn’t in the shot. Katie’s costume included purple, green, yellow, and blue scarves. Not red.
Her memory jarred loose. She’d seen a red scarf that night. Frantically, she flipped through the pictures to confirm, and there he was: Alex the pirate, with the red scarf around his neck. She looked up aghast. “It was you.”
He twitched. “What?”
“You wore the red scarf.” She turned the photo around so he could see it. “Pops didn’t kill Katie Duffy. You did. He just helped you cover it up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She sank onto the sofa, clutching the evidence in her lap. Her head spun. “You found out about the affair and you took it out on Katie,” she said, unable to look at him. “You must have followed her home from the party and strangled her. Pops probably showed up. He’d have been worried about her when she went home sick. He knew how to fake the murder scene—somehow he even knew about the bleach.”
“Just got lucky,” Pops said, his head wobbling as he trembled. “I didn’t know the killer used bleach. I just wanted to erase any evidence of your brother.”
“Pops,” Alex said, a desperate edge in his voice. “What are you doing, telling Anna this stuff?”
Pops waved a hand. “She knows enough. She may as well know it all.”
“She can’t know.” Alex waved the hammer wildly. “She’s a cop!”
“So was I,” Pops shot back. Then he added softly, “Once.”
“You gotta understand. I didn’t mean to do it.” Alex turned to her, his expression pleading. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I just went there to confront her, to get her to leave our family alone. She called me a child. Told me to mind my own business. Like my family wasn’t my business!”
“Alex,” Annalisa said, her eyes on the hammer. “Put down the hammer.”
He looked at it as though seeing it for the first time. “You think I would hit you with it? Huh, is that what you think? That I’m some monster who would kill his own sister?”
“I don’t think that. I just want you to put it down.”
“What are you gonna do, Anna? Huh? You’ve got to throw that shit away for good. You have to.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. There were tears in his eyes. “I’ve got a family, Anna. Think of Sassy, and Gigi and Carla. They need me.”
She wanted to die, thinking of it. How many lives were about to be exploded? “I can’t,” she said tightly. She couldn’t carry their sins with her. She wouldn’t.
“Anna…” Pops tried cajoling her. “What good would it do now?”
Tears streamed down her face. “Your secret got one woman killed, Pops. It almost destroyed your son.” It made sense now, how Alex’s drinking had intensified after Katie’s death. “You want it to take me, too? Because that’s what will happen. I can’t go the rest of my life pretending I don’t know.”
Pops’s face turned hard. “You will kill this family, then. All of us.”
Alex sobbed, the hammer dropping to the floor with a thud. He leaned his back against the paneled wall and slid to the floor, burying his face in his hands. Her phone buzzed and she looked at it out of habit. It was a text from Colin. Epic vacation countdown is at ten hours. Can’t wait to see you. She swiped angrily at her face and turned the phone against her leg so she couldn’t see his words. Another relationship, shattered. There would be no vacation from this, not ever. Her new passport sat on her kitchen table, pristine and unused. She could go anywhere in the world that she wanted, but she could never come home again.
She trembled as she raised the phone again. She dialed a familiar number, heard Zimmer’s terse reply on the other end. Zimmer would know what to do. Her commander would be able to arrange as soft a landing as possible for Pops and Alex. Still, Annalisa had to swallow twice before she could make any sound come out. With Alex weeping in the background, she forced herself to say the words. “Commander, it’s Vega. I—I need to report a murder.”