“She didn’t talk about herself?”
“She said that she might go on a girls’ vacation to Hawaii with Shayla and a few other friends, but the details and dates were still up in the air. That’s it.”
“Nothing about Dad?”
“I made a habit of not asking about Joel, and your mother made a habit of not bringing him up in conversations. It made us both happy. Honestly, I ignored your dad most of the time.”
“He said something to you when Mom disappeared. I saw you arguing.”
“Yes, you did. He was talking about Lily in the past tense. Hell, it had only been a few days, but he already assumed that she was dead. I told him off, and he defended himself, saying that I didn’t know what he was going through, losing a wife. Then we walked away from each other, and we haven’t spoken since.”
“Do you still talk to Kim?”
Tate knew that Mark and Kim hadn’t been all that close growing up. That had been clear, watching the relationship between them whenever he was in town.
“Let’s just say that I talk to Kim even less than I talk to you,” Mark replied. “If you’re going where I think you’re going, you need to stop. While Kim and I can barely be in the same room together, I don’t think she had anything to do with Lily’s disappearance. She doesn’t have the guts or the ability. Kim doesn’t have many original thoughts. She only jumps on other people’s bandwagons. She was blessed with many lovely qualities, but leadership wasn’t one of them.”
“What if my dad came up with the idea and got her on board?”
“Why would your father kill your mother? Listen, I don’t like Joel, and I think he’s a terrible human being, but I’m not sure he’s a murderer. In his own weird and twisted way, he loved your mother. Fuck, he loved her so much that he married her sister. A wedding I was happy to skip, by the way, not that I was invited.”
“Maybe they argued. Maybe?—”
“Stop all of this,” Mark commanded. “You’re going to make yourself crazy at this rate. Let me ask you this. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that your father killed your mother? Any at all?”
“No,” Tate admitted, his shoulders slumped. “I don’t want my dad to be a killer, Mark. I just…it’s always the spouse, right?”
“Except when it isn’t. I wish I could be of more help, but I’ve had my own theory for years. I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to deal with it. Therapy helps.”
“What theory is that?”
And how do I get some of that peace for myself?
“She was kidnapped and killed,” Mark said, visibly shuddering as he spoke the words. “By a stranger. Lily was trusting. I think she trusted the wrong person and was taken from that parking lot and killed. Maybe with some ruse that they needed help. She liked helping people. I think they took her, killed her, and hid the body well. Someday it will be found, but I may not be alive to see it. And because it was a stranger murder, I don’t think we’ll ever find out who did it unless they confess.”
As Finn had told Tate on more than one occasion, it was often the most straightforward and most obvious explanation that turned out to be correct. There was usually no vast conspiracy, no strange twisted story.
Evil walks among us wearing masks.
Lily Winslow might have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“We’re still going to look at the other items in the storage unit,” Tate finally replied. “Mom kept them there for a reason.”
“I would agree with you there. If Lily kept those financial records, it wasn’t some random reason. It was deliberate. But Tate…that doesn’t mean it was the reason she disappeared. It might be, but it might not. You need to be ready for that.”
Mark might be able to be at peace, but Tate wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. Not yet. There were still avenues to pursue and questions to ask. If, in the end, he didn’t know what had happened to his mother?
He’d find a way to deal with it then. But not one day before.
Chapter
Eighteen
“I’m goingto stop at the bookstore,” Cat’s mother announced as they walked down the sidewalk towards Tate’s bar.
They were meeting for dinner, along with Tate’s siblings and Uncle Mark, who was unexpectedly in town for a visit. Or not so unexpectedly, depending on how one looked at it. Tate had been searching for his uncle, but he hadn’t thought that Mark would simply show up out of nowhere as a surprise.
“Go on to the tavern,” Grace said. “But I want to pick up a new book. I’ll go back to the house when I’m done. And yes, it’s okay.”
