by Emily James
She scurried off and came back with two books clutched to her chest. She crawled up on the couch beside me and laid the books out on her own lap. One had a giraffe doing a pirouette on the cover and the other had a colony of ants. Janie must be an animal lover.
“Which one should we start with?”
She handed me the one with the ants. I read the story through, giving each character its own voice. The plot revolved around one little ant who couldn’t keep the secrets that the other ants told him, and it cost him all his friends because no one trusted him.
Since it was a kid’s book, it had a happy ending. It was too bad that the problems in life couldn’t be fixed as easily as a children’s story book.
I closed the board book and handed it back to Janie.
She stared at the cover. “Daddy thinks you’re keeping secrets.”
Dan wouldn’t have told Janie that, so she must have overheard. Rule of thumb number one with kids seemed to be never to say anything within their earshot that you didn’t want repeated. Dan probably hadn’t even realized Janie was eavesdropping.
The real question for me was one of timeline. “When did he say that?”
“Tonight. On the phone.” She frowned down at the book in her lap. “I don’t like secrets.”
Ouch. Nothing like being reprimanded by a four-year-old. Having a child tell me how wrong I was would have been a part of motherhood I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed.
I should have been surprised that Dan still had questions about me given he’d invited me into his home, but I wasn’t. Something in his expression when I’d been asking him not to tell anyone that I’d saved Janie had been sitting uncomfortably in the back of my mind. He might have even had an ulterior motive for inviting me here. He might hope to learn what I was holding back.
But he also had respected my request. Whatever he thought I was hiding, I had to believe he wasn’t trying to prove I’d killed Harold anymore. No father would invite someone they believed was a murderer into their home with their child. Right?
I picked up the book with the giraffe on it, but I didn’t open the cover. I still owed Janie some sort of response. “Not all secrets are bad. Some secrets are good secrets, like if you’re throwing someone a surprise party. And sometimes grown-ups have to keep secrets for other reasons too. Like when telling the truth would put someone else in danger.”
It was the closest I could come to telling her I wasn’t a bad person just because I was keeping a secret. I couldn’t stand the idea that she’d think I was a bad person. The memory of her throwing herself into my arms because she believed I was a good and safe person was one that would keep me going on days when it felt like it was pointless to keep trying to have a better life.
She pulled at her bottom lip with one hand and flipped through the pages of the ant book with the other. “How do you tell a good secret from a bad one?”
“I think a good secret makes you feel good about keeping it, and a bad secret doesn’t.”
The complicated part as an adult was that some secrets could make you feel both good and bad. I felt good that I’d been able to reinvent myself to stay safe from Jarrod. It’d taken determination I hadn’t been sure I had. I felt good that I was brave enough to leave and do what it took to protect myself.
I felt terrible that I had to keep that secret from every person I met. I felt even worse that my secret might jeopardize the hunt for Harold Cartwright’s real killer.
But not bad enough to give them my fingerprints and have them match Amy Miller’s. If I did that, there was no way Jarrod wouldn’t know exactly where I was.
Dan cleared his throat from the doorway. “Supper’s ready.”
I couldn’t help wondering how long he’d been standing there.
While Dan put Janie to bed, I ended up alone on their couch with nothing to occupy myself except trying to remember any more details about the car or the driver.
I’d been so intent on getting Janie out of the car’s path that I hadn’t bothered to look at the driver. I couldn’t have told the police anything about them. I couldn’t even be sure if the car was white, tan, or silver.
Now that the shock of it was wearing off, something wasn’t sitting right. The fact that they hadn’t slowed down at all still bothered me. My first thought had been that they must have been on their phone, but it was a school zone. What kind of person is on their phone in a school zone? On their phone, in a school zone, driving over the speed limit—as far as I could tell.
It was almost like they wanted to run Janie down as she crossed the street.
But that made no more sense than someone wanting to kill a hundred-year-old man.
Dan came back into the living room and leaned on the wall by the door. There was a tiredness to his stance that I hadn’t seen before. During the day, he’d been all confidence and bravado and strength. It was like watching a knight crawl out of his armor at the end of a battle.
“She’s asleep,” he said. “Thank you again for saving her. Twice.”
He didn’t say any of the clichés like that he didn’t know what he’d do if he lost her. Or how important she was to him. He didn’t need to. I could see it. He reminded me of how my dad had been with me. We’d talked about it once I was in high school, how much pressure he felt to try to be both a mom and a dad to me.
Which raised the question of where Janie’s mom was.
Dan hadn’t seemed to call anyone but the police when the car almost ran us down. Maybe he called Janie’s mom after we got back to the house, but Janie hadn’t mentioned her mom to me either. And Dan appeared to have full custody.
As hard as it was for me to comprehend, parents in custody battles did strange things. Maybe Janie’s mom felt like if she couldn’t have her daughter, Dan shouldn’t have her either. Or maybe she’d planned to swerve at the last minute, scaring Janie but not hurting her and using the near miss as evidence that Dan wasn’t a fit parent.
He pushed away from the wall. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
I’d never sleep if I had coffee this late. “I’ll take hot chocolate if you have it.”
A ghost of a smile passed over his lips. “Hot chocolate it is.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with two mugs. He handed me mine and took a spot on the opposite end of the couch, angling to face me.
I felt weird broaching the topic of what happened today. I might simply be paranoia, and then I’d be adding extra fear onto him.
I also didn’t want to make it sound like I was asking about Janie’s mom because I was trying to figure out if he were single or not. That would create a whole barrel of awkward that I didn’t need.
The best way seemed to be to make it sound like I was concerned about her mom. “Did you call Janie’s mom to tell her what happened?”
“Her mom’s dead. Both her parents are. I did call Claire.” He pointed toward a bookshelf where a wedding picture sat. The man in it had the same nose and brow-line as Dan, a similar shape to his jaw, but he was huskier and shorter. “My brother and his wife died in a motorcycle accident when Janie was eighteen months old. I adopted her. I guess I could have raised her to call me Uncle Dan, but I’m the only dad she’s going to know, and every kid deserves a dad if they can have one.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but I gave him a smile from my heart this time.
Then I remembered why I’d asked about her mom in the first place, and the smile died out of my heart. “It seems like too big a coincidence that someone killed your grandfather and now a car almost runs down your daughter.”
I let the idea hang in the air. I couldn’t bring myself to suggest that maybe someone was actually trying to hurt him. Because saying it would have hurt him, and for whatever reason, it hurt me to think about doing that. His kindness had found a crack in my defenses big enough that the welfare of this family mattered to me when it shouldn’t have.
Dan set his cup aside. “It’s not imposs
ible that this is about me. If the two are connected, we could be wasting our time looking at Mike. He’s an…a jerk, but he wouldn’t have any reason to hurt Janie.”
“What about the ketchup though?”
Dan pressed the heels of his hands against his temples and ran them backward like he was trying to force the tension out of his head. “We might be overthinking it. Claire’s gotten that ketchup for Grandpa’s birthday party every other year. If someone attended in the past, it’d be easy enough to assume that it’d be the same ketchup this year. Grandpa worked for that company his whole life, and he swore he could tell the difference when someone gave him a different ketchup.”
I should ask Dan who would want to hurt him, but it felt too intrusive. He hadn’t argued that no one would want to hurt him, which suggested he had a couple ideas of people who might. He just wasn’t ready to share them.
Instead of saying anything more, I gulped down the rest of my hot chocolate. I could tell it came from a package. If I ever got the opportunity, I’d make Dan and Janie real hot chocolate.
The hot chocolate burned my belly. I wouldn’t get a chance to do that. As soon as I wasn’t a suspect anymore, I’d be gone from Lakeshore. Gone from their lives. And I wouldn’t be coming back.
Chapter 19
Dan and I talked late into the night, at first tossing around theories about the case but then it moved to his challenges as a single dad and why I loved baking. Part of me worried he might be digging for more information on me, but it felt so good to talk to someone. I even went so far as to give him some tips from my experience as the daughter of a dad doing it on his own.
I didn’t die in the night from my injuries, and in the morning, I made Dan and Janie French toast. And realized how spoiled I’d gotten in Fair Haven because of Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes’ pure maple syrup. The imitation maple syrup from the grocery store didn’t satisfy in comparison.
Dan dropped Janie off at school, swung by the bank and got me the money Claire owed me, and then brought me to my truck. A yellow slip waved at me from under the windshield wiper.
A parking ticket. Perfect. Exactly what I didn’t need.
Dan climbed out of the car with me and plucked the ticket off the truck before I could reach it. “I’ll take care of this. It’s the least I can do.”
He doesn’t really want to help you, Fear said. He just wants to use the ticket to try to get your last name.
Fear could be right or wrong. Dan probably did still want my last name, but if I didn’t at least try to trust someone who’d been kind to me, I’d never be able to trust anyone ever again. I didn’t want to be that kind of person. That kind of person lived and died alone.
Besides, he couldn’t get my last name from my parking ticket. Even if he managed to get information on my truck, it was owned by a numbered company I’d set up.
So all I said was, “Thank you.”
He still didn’t move back to his car, like there was something more he wanted to say. He put both his hands into his pockets. It felt like a little boy was suddenly standing in front of me rather than a grown man.
He pulled a folded piece of white paper from his pocket and handed it to me. I slowly unfolded it.
The paper had a black-and-white line drawing of a kitten with a sock on its head and the words Come Join Us for a Production of Mitten the Kitten and the Very Bad Day. The date and time were for tomorrow night. He’d actually been telling the truth when he called and said his daughter was in a play.
Dan shifted his weight. “Janie asked me last night if you were going to come to her play. I told her I didn’t know but that I’d ask you.”
Weight hit my chest like I’d been kicked below my collar bones. He couldn’t know what an invitation like that meant to me. To feel like I was wanted and welcome.
There was no way I could go. I couldn’t get more attached to that little girl. It’d only be worse for both of us when I had to leave.
And yet I wanted to go more than I’d wanted anything in a very long time—other than to stay alive, of course.
“I’ll check, but I don’t think I have anything else planned,” I said before I could stop myself. I’d give myself that one last happy memory before I left Lakeshore.
If things didn’t turn around in the investigation soon, I might have to leave right after the play in order to get as far away as possible before Friday when I was supposed to meet with the detective.
I opened the passenger-side door and tucked the invitation into my glove box, then turned back to Dan. I didn’t have a lot of experience with boundaries. Did that invitation mean I could give a suggestion about Janie or not? I wasn’t exactly a family friend. I was some weird lady who he originally thought was a murderer and now wasn’t quite sure what to think about.
But it’d bother me if I didn’t say something. This was probably my last chance.
“Did the teacher’s assistant tell you what Janie lied about?”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t the one who heard it, but Janie’s teacher had an appointment and couldn’t wait since I was late.”
“Get the full story before you punish her, okay?” Heat was already riding up my cheeks. “It’s easy to believe a person in a position of authority just because they’re in that position, but they’re not always the one you should believe.”
A little Edison lightbulb went off in my brain. That’s why it’d bothered me. It bothered me because I’d once been the person who was afraid no one would believe her. I hadn’t tried to leave Jarrod earlier because he told me everyone would side with him if they even believed me.
Something I couldn’t interpret flitted across Dan’s face. He opened his mouth, and his phone rang. “Just a second.”
He pulled the phone out and slid his finger across the screen. “Holmes.”
“We got a warrant for her fingerprints.” The voice coming from Dan’s phone was just barely loud enough for me to hear. “We’ll serve it on her tomorrow and hold her until the results come in.”
My hands went numb, and I turned away and pretended to examine a scratch on the side of my truck.
“If the fingerprints match, we’ll have her name and enough to dig into her financials. Any unusual deposits and we’ll have our arrest.”
My actions must have tricked Dan into believing that I couldn’t hear what was going on because he hadn’t moved away.
The police didn’t normally share those types of details with civilians, not even with members of the victim’s family. Not until after an arrest had actually been made. And Dan seemed to know exactly what she the person on the other end of the line meant.
I had a bad feeling I did too. Detective Labreck hadn’t believed that I would show up on Friday and give my fingerprints willingly. He’d decided to take the initiative, rightly figuring I’d stick around for a few days since I thought I had until Friday.
My breath lodged in my throat. I was an idiot. There was only one reason the detective would call Dan with that kind of information. I should have seen it.
His ability to hide his thoughts and emotions. His connection in the police department that gave him more information than anyone would normally have access to. Even his quick willingness to deal with my parking ticket.
Dan was a cop.
And I’d been used.
Chapter 20
Dan’s invitation to stay at his house last night for my health had really been about making sure he knew where I was. His invitation to Janie’s play had been about making sure the police could find me to serve their warrant for my fingerprints.
Even his farce of working together had all been to see if I’d slip up. When I didn’t offer my fingerprints after we talked about the killer’s fingerprints needing to be on all the bottles, that’d probably convinced him of my guilt rather than the other way around.
And he’d only been humoring me when I suggested Harold’s death and the car trying to run Janie down might have been about someone trying to hurt him. He�
�d never believed me. He thought it was me trying to turn the attention elsewhere.
I had to get out of here, out of Lakeshore. Now. Without anyone realizing that’s what I planned to do.
I straightened up and turned back to face Dan. I tacked a smile on my face. It’d fooled Jarrod enough times even though we’d been married for years. It should fool someone who didn’t truly know me and never would.
“I have to get going,” I whispered and motioned toward my truck. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
I strode around the front of my truck and climbed in as if nothing were wrong. I even waved to him.
That was one thing I could thank Jarrod for. I knew how to act. I knew how to fake a smile and lie to a person’s face in the name of self-preservation.
I pulled out onto the road. It didn’t look like Dan planned to follow me.
I turned off of the side street onto a larger road that should take me out of town. My windshield was blurry, so I flipped on my windshield wipers. It hadn’t looked like rain before. The windshield wipers dragged across my windshield, but the wetness didn’t clear.
Something dripped off my chin.
It wasn’t raining. I was crying.
I drove for an hour without stopping, heading in the direction of Detroit. That seemed like the best place to disappear. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone willing to sell me a new identity, even if it did strip my bank account bare.
I had a back-up set of license plates stored with my spare tire, but I’d have to find somewhere to get the truck repainted in the next 24 hours. The BOLO for me and my vehicle would describe it well enough that an officer who spotted me would pull me over and detain me whether the plates matched or not.
I refilled my truck’s fuel tank with enough to get us to Detroit, but I pulled my phone out before heading back onto the highway. Even if I reinvented myself again, I had one connection I didn’t want to lose.