Page 75 of The Summer that Changed Everything
Half expecting it to be Patti coming back, Ford turned just before they walked into the house to see someone he didn’t recognize. The man looked as though he felt awkward as he approached, especially when he offered an apologetic smile. “I’m Reggie’s brother-in-law,” he announced, “and I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t believe it,” Lucy said after Anna’s husband left. Joel had stayed only a few minutes, but the confirmation he’d offered meant so much. “Did that really just happen?”
Ford shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “You’re busting this thing wide-open, Luce.”
Somethingseemed to be happening—a change to the old power paradigm. When she came back to North Hampton Beach, she hadn’t been truly convinced it was possible, so even such a small win stunned her.
Too amped up to sit, she put her purse on the counter and continued to walk through the house to the glass doors fronting the deck and the ocean beyond.
“Want to go for a walk?” Ford asked.
She opened the door to step outside. “A short one. Just long enough to be able to soak in what Joel Stover told us. Then we need to call the investigator.”
“And Chief Claxton,” he added.
Her father had been right all along. Mick would know that, of course. But nowtheyknew it, as well. Reggiedidlie when he claimed Mick had confessed to Aurora’s murder. Anna’s husband had told them Reggie admitted to Anna, when she was just sixteen, that he’d lied on the stand, and she was willing to sign an affidavit stating as much. Throughout, Joel had been protective of his wife, said she’d been afraid to come forward because it could cost her the only family she had before him and the kids.
Still, he made it clear that she wanted to do the right thing at last.
Ford had thanked him, the two men had clasped hands, then Joel had left. When it came to her father, it’d been a very long time since anything had gone her way. “It’s the Ford effect,” she joked, kicking off her flip-flops as they arrived at the beach.
“Thewhat?” Ford said, confused because she hadn’t offered any context.
She grinned at him before running toward the wet sand, which would be much cooler on her feet. “Nothing.”
He ran after her. Then they walked for a few minutes, sometimes pausing just to stare out to sea. “Who do you think killedAurora?” he asked at length, finally breaking the companionable silence.
It wasn’t her father, despite what everyone believed. The thought alone was startling—or not the thought so much as the sudden conviction she could now put behind the thought. Lucy felt almost drunk with relief. “Has to be someone she ran into at the party, doesn’t it? But that doesn’t make it easy to figure out. There were a lot of people there.”
Ford’s voice was contemplative as he said, “The Zampinos’ son?”
She grimaced. “I don’t think so. Lance was playing poker with his friends long after Aurora went missing.”
“What if her brother picked her up, they got into a fight that went too far, and Darren dumped her in the river?”
“If he’d done that, he wouldn’t have come over to tell me that it couldn’t have been my father. He even admitted he was afraid he’d get blamed, which was why he hadn’t tried harder to be heard fifteen years ago. Those things don’t seem like the actions of someone who’s guilty of murder.”
“I don’t know about that. Sometimes people are so guilt ridden there’s a part of them that wants to be caught.”
“I hope it’s not him. I like Darren.”
“What about Reggie?”
Shedidn’tlike Reggie. “I guess it could be him. But he comes off more as an opportunist in this situation—someone who simply figured out a way to benefit from everyone else’s pain.”
Ford bent to pick up a beautiful bluish green piece of sea glass he handed to her, and she admired it before slipping it into her pocket. “If we can get Chief Claxton to believe it wasn’t my father and actually reopen the investigation, maybe we’ll find out.”
“He needs to see if Reggie has an alibi for that night. He needs to talk to everyone who attended that party again, too. Maybe someone will remember something that takes the investigation in a different direction.”
“We know Darren doesn’t have an alibi.”
“If what he says is true, my father could give him one. Except he was so drunk he doesn’t remember much about that night.”
“How are you feeling toward your father?” he asked, picking up a broken shell this time and throwing it into the ocean.
“Conflicted,” she admitted. “I feel guilty for ever believing he killed Aurora. I remind myself that hedidkill the Matteos. But then the little girl in me who still wants to believe in her daddy suggests that maybe he didn’t do even that.” Suddenly feeling more pensive than euphoric, she stopped and turned toward the houses lining the beach, staring down the row of mansions she’d once admired so much. They’d seemed as far out of her reach as the stars, and so did Ford after her father was picked up by the police. She could hardly believe she was spending so much of her time in North Hampton Beach with him. “He couldn’t be innocent of all of it, could he, Ford?” she asked. “It would be so unfair to suffer such an injustice.”
“Sadly, if heisinnocent, he wouldn’t be the first innocent man to go to prison.”
