Page 13 of I’ll Be Watching You

He shook his head slightly, and I stopped talking. Maybe this was his way of sharing information? Giving me a clue? Helping with his own defense, a defense he never gave after Klein was killed?

“Ava started spotting. Your mom—so strong, so smart—was terrified of losing you. She cried, and you know your mom, she’s not a crier.” He gave me a wistful smile. “She had to limit all activities for the remainder of her pregnancy. Not complete bed rest, but she couldn’t pick up Tess or Jack, couldn’t cook or clean or do much of anything physically. When you arrived a month early, you weren’t breathing. I was there, in the room, but you weren’t, not completely. My heart stopped beating, your mother was begging the doctor to give her the baby, she wanted to hold you. Then the doctor cleared your lungs, and you screamed. The happiest sound I’ve ever heard. You were there. One minute, nothing, complete emptiness . . . the next, pure joy. I held you, just for a moment, before handing you to your mother. You stared at me, as if imprinting my face on your memory. So alert, so small, so fierce. I felt closer to you than your siblings. I love them, but after that moment, when my greatest fear turned to my greatest joy, I knew family comes before everything.”

I waited—for more, for a clue, anything that told me where to look for answers.

He stood, and my heart sank. His whole body took on an aura of defeat. I wanted to shake the truth out of him.

“Dad—”

“I beg you, Margo. Leave it.”

And he walked away.

I sat there long after he was taken back to his cell, practically shell-shocked.

I only had one option left.

Mom.

Chapter Four

Driving back to Phoenix, I called the Angelhart office to find out if my mother was in. She wasn’t. According to Iris, our office manager, she was running errands then had a dentist appointment. After getting the details, I figured she’d be home by six. I could confront her in front of Jack and Tess, but I also knew my mom—she would clam up if she thought she was being ganged up on. Which was pretty much my MO as well. I came by it honestly.

No, this was between Mom and me.

I was certain she knew the truth. She would never have stood by Dad’s confession if she didn’t know at least most of what happened the night Devin Klein was murdered. She had stuck by my dad’s side from the very beginning, never wavering, never questioning his decision to plead guilty. Yet there was one thing she had never said out loud: Your father killed a man.

She’d told us to stand by Dad in this difficult time. She’d explained what the plea agreement entailed: Your father is pleading guilty to second-degree murder and will be in prison for fifteen years. She had visited him every week since. But never did she say he pulled the trigger, that he killed someone, that he was taking his punishment because of remorse for his actions.

She knew. Uncle Rafe knew as well, because he would have taken Dad’s confession, but getting Uncle Rafe to spill confidences from the confessional would literally never happen. Mom wasn’t a much easier nut to crack, but I was going to crack her.

No more secrets. No more obfuscations. The truth had to come out. For my dad. For me. For Liz Swanson’s boys.

I let myself into my childhood home at five thirty that afternoon, just as my phone rang. It was Cal.

I considered ignoring his call, but answered on the third ring.

“Hey,” I said.

“I haven’t heard from you all day. How did your meeting go?”

I hadn’t called or texted Cal about the double homicide.

“It didn’t. We should talk, but not over the phone.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding more cop than boyfriend.

“I’ll tell you tonight. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I shouldn’t be later than nine.”

“I’ll meet you at your house. You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah.” Okay really didn’t mean anything. I was physically okay. Hell, I was even emotionally okay. I was just not truly “okay” because my dad was in prison and Liz Swanson and her husband were dead and something bad had happened three and a half years ago that had my dad keeping a dark and dangerous secret.

And that, ultimately, was what bothered me. My dad was in prison because he was protecting a killer. And that killer he was protecting had most likely killed the Swansons. Why would he do such a thing?

“Margo,” Cal said, “don’t be too late, or I’ll send out an army looking for you.”

“I won’t.”