After dinner, Blaze crashes on the couch, since Charlotte’s sharing her bed. For hours Olivia paces her study. She isn’t ready to talk. Numb, she doesn’t know what to feel, let alone think about what Dwight did to Benton, Lily, and Josh. Three generations he’s successfully silenced one way or the other. And she’s having a hard time wrapping her head around that, so she spends the rest of the night with the Crimson Wave. By 5:30 a.m. she’s a wreck. Her dad killed a man. He might have killed Lily. Lucas doesn’t want to involve the cops. But she can’t sit here and do nothing.
Settling on the edge of the couch, she nudges Blaze awake. Tears run freely down her face. This is it. She’s losing it.
“Hey, hey, hey. What’s wrong?” He sits up and cups the back of her head.
“I wasn’t ready to talk last night.”
“I could tell. What’s up?” He caresses her damp cheek.
“It’s my dad. He did something awful. He’s a—” She stops. A sharp, acidic ache expands through her chest. Last week she had a loving, doting father. This week? He’s the most atrocious person she’s known. There’s a gaping hole in her heart where she’d once felt her love for him.
“Let me make us some coffee,” Blaze says.
In the kitchen, he brews coffee and she talks. She shares that Lily is her half sister and that Dwight isn’t returning home. She can’t explain why, but she has the feeling that she’ll never see him again. It was the look in Lucas’s eyes. Haunted. Something terrible happened to him while he was out of town and she suspects her dad was involved.
“Do you remember that case thirty years ago, the one where my parents’ neighbor was murdered? He was stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife? A couple of kids found his body washed up on the beach where the street dead-ends?”
“Vaguely. It was a big deal at the time, wasn’t it?”
Olivia nods. She was only five. Most of what she remembers she read about years later in old newspaper articles.
“It wasn’t solved. But everyone in the neighborhood was a person of interest and questioned. My dad was a suspect. Someone claimed they saw him out walking around the time of the murder. He got off because he had an alibi, my mom. The publicity ruined his chance of election. That was his first congressional campaign. He dropped out. He was very bitter about it.”
“What does this have to do with Lily?”
Olivia looks at the knife block on the counter and her stomach revolts. Her hand circles her throat. Her dad gifted the set with the house. He said he and Charlotte received it as a wedding gift but no longer had use for them. They bought a new set when they finished the kitchen in the new house, the one Olivia grew up in. They held on to them for her, he said when she found them in the attic.
A rush of heat crawls up Olivia’s throat. Her hand shakes when she lifts her coffee mug. She’ll never be able to use those knives again, not without wondering if the cook’s knife is the one Dwight used.
And what about Jean St. John, Benton’s widow? She moved to Texas almost ten years ago. Charlotte told her she remarried. Does Jean still think about her late husband or has she moved on? Lucas doesn’t want Olivia to call the police and risk them reopening the case. What’s he afraid of? And what if Olivia anonymously tips off Jean?
Her stomach wants to hurl the coffee she consumed. She presses a hand to her belly and Blaze is at her side.
“Are you all right? You look a little murky.”
She gasps softly and nods, then returns her full attention to Blaze. “The man murdered was Benton St. John, Lily’s father.”
Blaze sets down his mug. “Holy shit. If the police had known.”
“They’d have had probable cause against my dad. Things might have gone down differently for him. Here’s the kicker, though. My mom confessed last night it was my dad. He did it. She’s been covering for him.”
His jaw falls open. No words come out. He cups his mouth, steps back, then forward as if rocking from the news, and yanks her into his arms. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers over and over into her hair as she falls apart. Her body shakes, wrecked from the last forty-eight hours. “Where is he now?” he asks when she calms.
“I don’t know.” She sniffles, wipes her nose. “Mom says he’s not coming home.” Olivia thinks of Lucas again. The haunted look in his eyes. The cuts and bruises on his face and hands. He disappeared for three days. Dwight hasn’t called her in the same number of days. He never did respond to her texts.
Blaze rests his hand over hers. “What do you need from me?”
She points at the knife block. “Those were a wedding gift to my parents. They came with the house. My dad stored them with a bunch of other junk in the attic. Can you get them out of my sight?”
His face loses color as the meaning of those knives sets in. “On it.” He bags the block and takes it outside.
Olivia sits on the edge of her bed, watching Charlotte sleep. She nurses a tepid cup of coffee. As if sensing her presence, Charlotte stirs. She pushes up her eye mask and lifts her head. She looks around the room and squints at Olivia. “Why am I here?”
“You were upset. I didn’t want you to spend the night alone.”
She flops back on the pillow. “Take me home.”
Olivia looks at her coffee. The cream has curdled on the surface. She needs to stir it. Instead, she asks the question that’s been stirring in her head. “Is Dad dead? Is that why he’s not coming home?” She stops short of asking if Lucas killed him.
To her side, she hears Charlotte’s sharp intake of breath. Olivia looks at her, covers up to her chin. Petite and fragile, curled under a mound of blankets.
Charlotte scrapes her teeth on her bottom lip. She looks at the chandelier above the bed. “Did Lucas tell you?” she asks after a moment.
“Not so much in words.”
A tear rolls across her temple and disappears into her hair. “It was a car accident. The police came by yesterday morning.”
Olivia closes her eyes and lets Charlotte’s words sink in with everything else she’s heard in the last twenty-four hours. Relief washes over her. It wasn’t Lucas’s fault. She then waits for the sadness, and she waits for the rage. Her dad is dead. But the news doesn’t surprise her. She doesn’t react as she expected, crying until her throat hurts. She loved him like no other. But from her perspective, Dwight has been slowly dying all week. The more she learned about him, the more distanced she felt from the man who raised her. She was already pushing him away.
“Mom.” Olivia takes her hand. Charlotte’s fingers are Popsicle cold. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“I wanted to, Olivia. I didn’t know how. You were so close to your father. His little girl. But he . . . he . . .” She turns her face into the pillow.
Olivia sets her mug on the bedside table. “Should we tell Mrs. St. John?” She can’t stop thinking about Benton’s widow. If Blaze had been murdered, Olivia wouldn’t rest until the case was solved.
“No! Why would you do that?” Charlotte sits up. She grabs both of Olivia’s hands. “It’s been thirty years. She’s moved away and remarried. Why dredge up bad memories? Do you want to put me in prison?” she asks, horrified.