by David Bell
“What is it, honey? Tell me. I was trying to give you time to feel better. I knew we’d be talking about this sooner or later. I’d like to know why he put you out there. And whatever it is, we can handle it together.”
She rubbed the bedspread, and then tugged gently on one of the bear’s ears. “I saw something. When I came home from school the day Mom died, but before I went into the house, before I knew anything was wrong inside, I saw something.” She looked down at the bear. “I came walking down the street, and I saw Adam leave our house. He looked like he was in a hurry. Like he was kind of nervous or something. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. He came over sometimes, you know? To talk to you or whatever. And then when I . . . When I found Mom on the floor like she’d fallen, I forgot all about it for a few days. Maybe I was in shock or depressed or distracted. After her funeral, and we were both so upset, I just decided not to say anything. It didn’t seem like a big deal, and I thought it would be weird if I just out of the blue said to you, Oh, yeah, I saw Adam leaving the house the day Mom died. Right?”
“I guess so.”
“Besides, well, did you think Mom was acting weird before she died? Like something was wrong?”
“Like what?”
“Dad . . .” Summer took a moment, as though collecting her thoughts. But Bill could see she knew exactly what she wanted to say. She just didn’t appear certain she could.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Dad, I wondered if maybe Mom and Adam were having an affair. There was one other time I came home from school and saw him leaving the house like that. I didn’t think anything of it then either. And after Mom died . . . well, I wasn’t sure about any of it.” She paused, licking her lips. “I didn’t want to hurt you when you were already so brokenhearted about Mom.”
Bill took it all in, his heart beating faster and his skin prickling with energy. “Why are you thinking about all of this now? Did Adam say something to you out there?”
“I know what the police are going to want to know when they come in here,” she said. She tugged on the bear’s ear with more force, more urgency. “They’re going to want to know why all this happened, why Adam did this to me.”
“I thought he had a thing for Haley. For you, maybe.”
Summer’s mouth formed an “O,” and she blinked her eyes a few times. “Yes, there’s that. He and Haley were hooking up. And I don’t know if he was really interested in me. He told me a couple of times how much I looked like Mom.”
“What happened that day? Haley said Emily stopped to pick you guys up, but you didn’t go. You let Haley and Emily go on to see those boys from school, but you said you had something to do. What did you do that day? Go see Adam?”
“I did. Do you remember right before . . . before the attack? Adam came over to our house. You and he were going to have a drink and watch some basketball game?”
Bill squinted. “Yeah. UK was playing Florida, I think.”
“It was right after Mom’s birthday. Remember?” Summer’s voice gained an edge, a sharpness. “And Adam was in our house. I was doing homework in my room, ignoring the stupid basketball game. But I came out to go to the bathroom, and Adam was in the hallway. He was just standing there, looking at a picture of Mom. You know, that one from right after you got married? The one where she’s standing alone in front of some lake, and she looks really natural and beautiful?”
“Of course. Kentucky Lake. I remember. She looks just like you in the picture. What about it?”
“When I came out, and he saw me, he seemed kind of embarrassed. But he said, ‘Your mom was a special woman.’”
“Okay.”
“It’s the way he said it, Dad. It wasn’t right. And I’ve never forgotten him being in the house those times, including the day Mom died. It pissed me off, him talking about Mom that way right after her birthday, right in our house. With you in the other room, supposedly his friend. It seemed creepy. Really creepy.”
Bill swallowed. “So you went to see Adam the day of the attack. You just decided to do it that day?”
“I did. I’d been thinking about it and thinking about it. For a long time. And getting madder and more confused. I thought about running away. I thought about telling you. I guess I was kind of obsessed. And then I just thought . . . Go ask him. Just get it over with.” She shrugged, shaking Winnie the Pooh. “It was a Saturday. He’d be home. I didn’t feel like being with my friends if I was thinking about Mom and all that stuff. I was driving myself crazy. What did I have to lose? What?”
Bill’s mouth felt dry, his tongue swollen. “You should have told me.”
“And crush you?” she asked. “You’ve been pretty down, Dad. Like, way down. You didn’t need that if I was wrong. Hell, I wanted to be wrong. I did.”
Bill waited before asking, “Were you?”
She said, “He and Mom, you know, didn’t you ever get a weird vibe off the two of them? I mean . . . they could kind of act flirtatious when they were around each other. And Mom always talked about how handsome he was. I thought he was kind of gross, but Haley liked him.” She cut her eyes at Bill, her features softening. “Dad, if this is going to bother you—”
“Go on,” he said, fighting not to look away. “It’s okay. Go on.”
“I asked him. At first, he played it off, like I was joking, and he was joking. But I didn’t let it go. I didn’t just stop asking him because he wanted to act like it was no big deal. I said I really wanted to know why he was in our house that day. Was he there when Mom fell? Did he call nine-one-one?” She swallowed hard. “I just flat out asked if they were having an affair.”
“I think they were because she—”
“He said they weren’t.” She rose up a little, moving her body toward Bill. “He said he wanted to, that they did have a flirtation and came close, but that Mom didn’t want to. That day, the day she died, he went over there to close the deal, to be with her and convince her to leave you, and she told him no. Mom said she’d started to tell him with a note, but then she just decided to talk to him in person and called him over. And she let him down. She told him she loved you and me, and she wasn’t going to risk everything she cared about.”
Bill remembered the crumpled note. It was to Adam and not him.
She called me first that day, trying to patch things up, he told himself. She called me first.
For the second time in the span of hours, Bill experienced the most indescribable feeling of relief, a yearlong burden lifting from his shoulders. He raised his head, leaning back, his eyes taking in the bright white of the ceiling. He swore if he’d stepped on a scale at that moment, he would have weighed ten pounds less. He stayed in that position for longer than he realized, thinking that at any moment he’d float away, up to the ceiling and beyond. He felt so light.
“He was probably lying,” Bill said.
“I don’t think he was. I mean, it’s just my gut, but he seemed to mean it when he denied it. He seemed, I don’t know, hurt by the whole thing. Like Mom had broken his heart by turning him down.” She reached out and placed her hand on top of Bill’s. “Did you know all of this, Dad?” she asked. “Did you know that Adam was at the house that day? Did you know and just not tell me because . . . Well, I don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know he was there that day,” Bill said, looking down. “I promise.”
Summer’s eyes were boring into Bill. There was still something else.
“Did you ask him something else that day?” Bill asked.
She nodded.
“Something that made everything escalate.”
She nodded again. “I asked him if he hurt Mom. Physically hurt her.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
Bill’s entire body trembled. He felt like a scared kitten, a small creature, overwhelmed by the circumstances around him.
“What possible reason did you have to ask such a question?” Bill asked. “Mom fell. It was an accident.”
Tell me it was an accident, he thought.
“But, Dad, did Mom ever act that way? Did she ever drink in the middle of the day? And then climb on a ladder to paint after she’d been drinking? It just wasn’t like her, was it? She wasn’t clumsy. She didn’t mess things up.”
“No, she didn’t. But she and I—”
“And if someone was innocent, how would they react to my accusing them? How?”
“They’d deny it. They’d probably deny it whether they were guilty or not.”
Summer leaned back, sinking into the pillows. She closed her eyes for a moment.
“I should go,” Bill said. “You’re tired. This is too much.” But he didn’t mean it. He wanted—needed—to hear it to the end.
“No. Listen, Dad.” She opened her eyes. “I accused him of having an affair with Mom, and he says he didn’t have one with her. Fine. At that point, what’s the harm? I’m a silly, upset teenager without a mom who made a crazy accusation. Right?”
“Right. I guess.”
“He’s not in any trouble for that if it isn’t true. I could leave his house and no one would ever know we had that conversation.”
“Okay.” And then Bill understood the direction she was going. “So when you asked him if he—” Bill couldn’t bring himself to say the word “murder.” It felt so outlandish, so crazy and incomprehensible. Like a long word in a foreign language. “You asked him if he hurt Mom, and what did he do?”
“He wouldn’t let me leave. He said that everything was complicated and no one was supposed to get hurt. And then he said again that I couldn’t leave his house.”
Bill looked down at Summer’s hands where they rested on the mattress. He saw the red, raw skin on her right wrist, the bruises on her arm. “What did he do to you?”
“He asked me if I’d told anyone else about my suspicion that he killed Mom. I hadn’t, Dad. Not you, not Haley. And I told him that I hadn’t. I didn’t want him to hurt anyone else. I told him that I didn’t want to hurt anyone or cause any problems in case I was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bill asked. “Summer, you could have come to me. We could have figured this out. You can always come to me.”
“You were so unhappy, Dad. So, so unhappy. I couldn’t add to it. I already had to look at you every day. The way you moped and thought about Mom. What if I was wrong and I brought that up for nothing?”
Bill blinked a few times, sniffed. “Okay, okay. And then what did Adam do?”
“He got up and came toward me.” Her eyes were glassy, and Bill knew she was seeing the moment in her mind as she told him about it. “I thought he was going to, I don’t know, try to comfort me. Or hug me.” She shivered. “He overpowered me. He wrestled me to the floor and dragged me into the laundry room. He got out some ropes and stuff. I tried to fight back. . . . He might have hit me on the head or something. I think I was out for a minute.” She reached up and touched the back of her head. “I woke up in the trunk of his car with my phone and wallet gone. He had the lid open and was standing over me. We were in his garage. He told me to be quiet, not to say anything or scream. I wanted to call for you—I did. I wanted to scream, but he said if I did, he’d close the lid and let me rot in there. No one would hear me.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I’d heard. I wish I’d come running. . . . God, I’m sorry.”
Her voice sounded flat. “He closed the lid on the trunk. Maybe half an hour later, he drove me to that storage unit.”
Bill felt like the sun and the moon and the stars had landed on him. He could barely lift his head to look at his daughter. When he spoke, his voice was low and distant. “When you were out at that storage unit, did you ask him again?”
“Not really. I was too scared. I think . . . I think he didn’t know what to do once I was out there. Like . . . he couldn’t keep me around, because I’d tell everyone that he killed Mom, but he didn’t know what else to do with me at that point. He couldn’t kill me or anything. He wanted another way out, I think, but he didn’t know what it was. He talked about going away and starting over. I was afraid he was going to leave me out there forever. That’s why he told Teena where I was. I think he kept me out in that storage unit because he was stalling. Maybe he hoped someone else would get arrested. Or that he’d figure something out. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t hit me . . . or anything else. He fed me and gave me water, until he died, I guess. He said he was going to bring me clothes. Even my bear . . .”
“He did try to do that,” Bill said. “It cost him his life.”
“He really seemed . . . confused. Nervous. I’d never seen him act that way. He was always Mr. Cool. I begged him to let me go, to let me go home. But he said that was impossible. He said I could never go home again because of what I’d accused him of.”
Bill’s jaw trembled. His tongue felt twice its natural size, but he managed to force words out through his mouth. “Did he tell you what he did to her? Did he say how this happened?”
“He only talked about . . . that once.”
“You don’t have to. . . .” Bill wished she wouldn’t. He also wanted to know. He felt a hungry, gnawing desperation to know what happened to Julia.
Anything. Any detail. He wanted to know.
“After Mom shut him down, rejected him, he said he left. He went home to cool off. And then he said he felt bad about the way things ended, so he came back to the house. To apologize. And when he did that, he found Mom on the floor. Dead.”
“But he didn’t call anyone.”
“I asked him about that. I told him that. ‘Why didn’t you call for help? Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?’ He never brought it up again. That must have been right before he died. When he stopped coming, I thought he was just going to let me starve in there. I thought that was my punishment for asking too many questions.”
“Why didn’t he call for help if that story is true?”
“Why did he act that way? Why else would he have done what he did to me?”
Bill stood up, knocking the chair askew with the backs of his legs. When he came to his feet, his body wobbled. His head swam like he’d had too much to drink.
“Dad? You look pale.”
He held out a hand to reassure her.
“Dad, I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you before anyone else heard.”
Bill steadied himself. He came closer to the bed and bent down. He cupped his daughter’s face in his hands and kissed her on the forehead. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I wanted to know. I needed to know.” He kissed her again. When he straightened up, he still felt shaky, and his steps toward the door of the hospital room were lurching, uneven. But he made it there. He pulled the door open and waved to Hawkins.
“Dad?” Summer’s voice stopped him and he turned around. “I want to know what happened to Mom. I’m going to tell the police about it. I know . . . I know it might not be too late for them to examine Mom, to maybe look at her body again.”
Bill stood in the doorway, his body on the threshold. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He went out into the hallway. “She’s ready to talk to you,” Bill said. Hawkins took in the look on Bill’s face, concern showing on his own. But Bill shook his head, waving off the detective. “Go on,” he said. “Before she’s too tired. She has a lot to say.”
When he was alone with Paige, she came to his side, sliding her arm around his back. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s home, Bill. She’s finally home. And you found her. Do you understand? She wouldn’t be here without you.”
He thought of the way he stormed out of the house the day Julia died. The ignored phone calls. The attack on his daughter that went unheard right behind his house.
And, yes, finding Summer. He had been late, but he found her.
And he would bring her all the way home as soon as she was ready.
“Thanks, Paige.” He leaned against his sister, letting her take some of his weight. “I understand a lot of things now. Maybe more than I wanted to.”
EPILOGUE
Bill held the door for Summer.
She stepped inside the house, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt Bill had brought to the hospital. She held Winnie the Pooh in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other, and when Bill closed the door behind them and turned the lock with a loud snap, he felt like they’d both taken an important step on the long road that still lay ahead.
The nightmares started in the hospital, so Bill slept in the room with her. He never left her side. But he couldn’t stop the nightmares that were still bound to come, the jumpiness and anxiety about being in public or being alone.
A long road, indeed. But she was home.
She was alive.
“I’ll get the rest of the flowers later,” Bill said. “And the cards and everything. I can’t believe so much came to the hospital in just five days.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s nice to know people care.”
She walked off to her bedroom while Bill filled the vase with water and placed the flowers on the kitchen table. He knew there was something else he should do to them. Was it aspirin that kept them fresher longer? He decided to text Paige to ask her. She had left the day before, after Bill insisted they were fine. And he told her she needed to get back to her own family.
“We’ll visit this summer,” she said as she got into her car. “We can’t go so long without seeing each other.”
“And we shouldn’t only see each other when something awful happens,” Bill said.
“Agreed.”
They hugged. And Bill told his sister he loved her.
She looked surprised. “I love you too, Bill. See, there’s a sensitive guy inside there somewhere.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Bill said.