“Artie Wylie turned Dad in to the police,” she said softly.
Eli stared at her, quite literally unable to breathe. He couldn’t have heard that right.
“He discovered…something, I don’t know what. And he went straight to the cops and because of him, because of his gross disloyalty to his best friend, the police launched an investigation that sent our father to prison. And prison, we all know, caused him to have a fatal heart attack. So, Artie is responsible for our father’s death.”
Eli shook his head. “How? When? Why didn’t we know this?”
“My answer to all your questions is a fat, I don’t know,” Crista said. “I have just told you the sum total of what Mama would share with me. You know how she is.”
Vivien grunted. “Information is power, and she wants it all.”
Crista angled her head in concession. “But she wanted us to know that much, especially after you said…they’dbeen here.”
“They?” Eli scoffed, ire rising at the word. “Theyhave names. Kate and Tessa Wylie.”
“Is Kate here, too?” Crista asked on a gasp.
“No, but she was,” Vivien said, sneaking a look at Eli.
“So now it’s just”—Crista jutted her chin—“her.”
“Yes, just Tessa,” Eli replied. “For now.”
“Well, she needs to leave. There’s no debating this, Eli. Mama would have a cow.”
He managed not to roll his eyes, having not called Maggie anything but “Mom” or her first name since he was twelve. But to Crista, she was “Mama.”
Honestly, it didn’t matter how they referred to her—she called the shots in the Lawson family.
As for a debate? There’d be plenty of debate when the truth came out. And he’d have to tell his mother eventually, wouldn’t he? He wasn’t going to hide his feelings for Kate. This whole household already knew he and Kate were on the brink of…something.
Something that could disappear as fast as it had happened under the weight of a revelation like this. What if it were true? Could he love Kate if her father played a role in Dad’s arrest?
Yes, but it would introduce one incredibly ugly complication.
“Why don’t you tell us every single thing Mom said,” Vivien suggested to Crista. “Because this narrative doesn’t fit anything we know.”
“It’s not anarrative,” Crista shot back. “It’s a fact that I suppose you could look up in police investigation files.”
Eli shared another look with Vivien, knowing she was thinking exactly what he was—they could contact Peter McCarthy, their friend and a detective in Pensacola. Maybe he could look up those files.
“What did she say, Crista?” Eli pressed. “Exactly, word for word.”
“It was the typical conversation with Maggie Lawson,” she said with a shrug.
“In other words, she told you what to think,” Vivien said dryly.
“Pretty much,” Crista muttered, the comment surprising. Had he ever heard Crista utter an unkind word about their mother? “But Mama has strong feelings about things,” she added, as if she felt guilty even for implying anything negative about Maggie. “Some people do, you know. I appreciate that you hate conflict, Viv, but sometimes conflict is necessary.”
Eli looked from one sister to the other, who’d always been different on the subject of conflict.
Vivien hated it and usually capitulated, a pacifier in most situations, though she’d been working on her backbone this past month. But Crista seemed to thrive on conflict, along with a crippling need to have everything as perfect as she could make it.
All of which made him wonder just how hunky-dory it really was living with Maggie.
“Come on, Cris,” Vivien urged. “Time, dates, details? We need to know.”
Crista inhaled slowly, gathering her thoughts. “We were on our way to the airport for her big month-long trip to Europe with her gardening club. I told her that you two had called me to see what I thought about the possibility of keeping this house instead of selling it. And I told her that I thought that was something worth considering,” Crista added. “Because I do.”
