Annabeth retreated to the sanctuary of her bedroom, quietly closing the door behind her. The glow of the bedside lamp cast a warm light across the room. Ethan was answering late night emails before bed, giving her a few moments of solitude. She pulled up the number of her childhood home in Harbor Bay on her cell phone and hit enter.
Her father, Jimmy Connolly, picked up on the second ring. “Annabeth, is everything all right? Is the baby okay?” His voice, weathered by the years, sounded panicked. It was unusual for her to call so late.
“The baby’s fine, lots of kicking today. And I’m fine, too.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “I do need to talk to you about something. Are you alone?”
“Your mom’s taking one of her sleepy-time baths with her herbal tea and whatnot. But you’ve got me worried now.”
“I don’t think you need to be, but I felt like I should keep you in the loop.” As Annabeth delved into the details of Ethan’s communications with the Under Suspicion producer, she could feel her own anxieties about the renewed attention to the case growing. “I’m fairly certain Simon will point the finger at Ethan, saying he did it because his father was threatening to disown him if he continued seeing me.”
“Not to speak ill of the dead, but if anything, those people were never good enough for you. Treating you like that.”
Her father’s voice rumbled with a simmering anger, but it was nothing compared to the rage she had seen when she had come home after Simon and Michelle had pulled her aside at the Pizza Palace, trying to scare her away from dating Ethan.
Her mother had been at the grocery store, so it was Annabeth’s father who found her sobbing alone in her bedroom. When she told him what had happened, he was so angry she honestly feared that he would drive to the Harringtons’ house to give them a piece of his mind. Even when he learned about their deaths, she had overheard him telling her mother that Ethan would be better off in the long run without such a horrible father in his life.
“Here’s the thing, Dad. This show digs deep into every detail. If it comes out that Ethan dipped into his inheritance to help you pay off your loans, they’re going to make it look like another reason for him to hurt his parents. Or they might even insinuate that you were in on it, too, since you ended up getting money from their estate.”
“So why is Ethan doing this? Especially when you’re about to have a child.”
She did her best to explain her husband’s fears that his sister and eventually his child would doubt his innocence.
“What are you asking me, Annabeth?”
Good question, she thought. “You, Ethan, and I are the only ones who know that he gave you that money.”
“Loaned,” he emphasized.
Her father had insisted on paying them back and still sent periodic checks to Ethan and her.
“Ethan promises me he’s not going to tell the producers about the money, even if he agrees to do the show. And neither will I.”
“That’s not like you to lie, Annabeth.”
“I know, but it’s not really a lie. It’s just keeping family business private—as it should be.”
“And you don’t want your old man messing things up by letting something slip. Not to worry. Taking money from your daughter and son-in-law isn’t something a man boasts about.”
“Please don’t talk that way about yourself, Dad.”
Her father was a proud man. She remembered the pain in his eyes when he had asked to speak to her in private, making her promise that she would not reveal their conversation to her mother. Annabeth had recently mentioned that Ethan’s parents’ estate was about to be distributed, and her father wondered if Ethan might be willing to lend him money to prop up the hardware store. She had been so afraid to ask Ethan, but the desperation in her father’s voice had nearly broken her heart.
Ethan hadn’t even hesitated. By then, he had grown suspicious of Simon and viewed their inheritance as “blood money.” If he could use it to help Annabeth’s family, that was what he wanted to do.
She was worried he would regret the decision and resent her later for asking. Are you sure? she had asked. That money is for you and your siblings—for your security, for your future.
You are my security, Ethan had said. You are my future.
She had known at that moment that she would spend the rest of her life with him.
“Look, Annabeth. There’s something you should know if Ethan does this show.” Her father’s tone turned somber. “Things I thought were long behind me. You know my father was tied up with some bad people in Boston. He considered it the family business and assumed I’d be continuing the tradition. When I started dating your mother, he disapproved. Thought she wasn’t the right fit for me.”
“You’ve told me this. That’s why you were so angry when the Harringtons were trying to drive a wedge between Ethan and me.” She also knew that “bad people” was her father’s way of referring to the Boston Mafia, and that “not the right fit” was code for her mother having moved to the United States from Mexico as a child with her parents.
“Hear me out. I went my own way with your mother. Opened up the hardware store. Vowed to run it as a legitimate business. I struggled sometimes, but it was working. Then came the chain store off the highway, threatening to shut me down.”
She knew all of this as well. It was the reason he had so many loans and was on the verge of bankruptcy before asking if Ethan could help him out. She was afraid that Ethan might be pouring good money after bad, but her father had a plan to make the store work. Today, Jimmy’s was more a home goods boutique than a hardware store. The tourists kept him in the black with overpriced candles and fancy serving platters, while the locals still shopped there for batteries and extension cords. By no measure were her parents wealthy people, but to her knowledge, the crisis had passed.
“The loans, Annabeth. They weren’t only through the banks.”
She sat down on the bed, absorbing the impact of his words. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. I was desperate. I went to my father’s old buddies. I should have known that my connection to him would only take me so far. I would have let the store close before turning to you and Ethan, except they were threatening me, including you and your mother.”
Annabeth felt a chill run down her spine. “But the bad people are out of the picture now?” she asked.
“Very much so,” he said to her relief. “But it really would not be good if these TV people started asking questions about my old financial problems.”
“I understand.”
As Annabeth hung up, she vowed to herself once again not to let her family—Ethan, her parents, their baby—get hurt. She found herself praying that Laurie Moran would be able to prove that Simon was a murderer, once and for all.
After the conversation ended, Jimmy Connolly tried to focus on the Robert Parker novel he was reading, but found his thoughts drifting into the past. His wife, Maria, emerged from the shower in a fluffy bathrobe, hair wrapped in a towel. “Were you on the phone? I thought I heard your voice.”
He hesitated for a moment before replying. “Annabeth. Just catching up.”
“Shoot, I would have liked to talk to her.”
“Remember when we had to buy a new phone after you dropped the last one in the tub?” he said.
Her eyes sparkled as she smiled at the memory. “It was only once, and I’ve never used that bath oil again. I’ll give her a call tomorrow to see what I missed.”
He had met Maria when they were only seventeen years old. They’d been married thirty-five years, but had been together for nearly half a century. If it was possible, he loved her more with every passing year. Everything he had ever done—even his worst mistakes—had been to make a good life for her and Annabeth.
As Maria crawled into bed next to him and turned off the lamp on her nightstand, he tried to tell himself that the dangers he had feared all those years ago would remain in the past where they belonged. The show would not find out about the threats he had faced from his so-called “lenders.”
And, pray God, do not let them find the video. It was a secret that his good friend Chief Bruce Collins had taken to the grave.