Page 14 of I’ll Be Watching You

I ended the call and sat down at the kitchen counter, my stomach in knots, the gallon of iced coffee I’d drank throughout the day now making me feel ill.

I couldn’t sit more than two minutes, so I rose and walked around the house. So many memories here, mostly good. This was my home, even though I was thirty-three and had been on my own for fifteen years.

It would always be home.

When I was born, there were three bedrooms and two baths. The bedrooms were large—which was a good thing because otherwise Tess and I would probably have fought a lot more—but Jack, Tess, Nico, and I had to share a bathroom. When Mom was pregnant with Luisa they added another bedroom and expanded the family room, but the extra bathroom didn’t come until I was a junior in high school and Jack had already moved out of the house.

But it was a good house to grow up in, the bathroom fights notwithstanding. A happy house with a happy family.

Until Dad went to prison.

I stared at the family portrait that hung in the large foyer (another expansion from the second remodel). It wasn’t the most recent, but it was my mom’s favorite. Jack a senior, Tess a junior, me a sophomore, Nico a freshman. We were all standing in the back, Mom and Dad sitting on stools, their heads tilted just slightly toward each other, my mom’s smile genuine because Dad had made her laugh. And little Luisa—then barely seven—standing next to Dad, her hand on his arm, his hand on hers. We all wore jeans, the boys in crisp white button-down shirts, us girls in long-sleeve burgundy shirts, Mom and Dad wearing Christmas-themed sweaters.

When we all lived under this roof. Before Jack joined the police academy, before Tess went off to college, before I enlisted in the Army.

Before Dad went to prison.

I heard the garage door roll up and steeled myself for what I knew was going to be a battle. I stood in the kitchen as Mom entered through the side door. “Hello, dear,” she said and put her briefcase and purse down on the counter. “What a nice surprise, especially since I didn’t see you at the office today.”

A little jab, but I was used to it. I didn’t like going into the office if I had nothing to do there. Most of my work was in the field anyway.

She glanced at me before opening the refrigerator and removing a half-empty bottle of white wine. “Jack said you were meeting with a potential client?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She was murdered this morning.”

The bottle dropped to the counter, but didn’t fall over.

“My God, what happened?”

“She called me last night and wanted to meet this morning about something she saw at her place of employment. She didn’t show, and I learned that she had been gunned down outside her home. In North Peoria.”

My mom paled, but I went on.

“Her name was Liz Swanson. Her husband was also killed. They left behind two teenage boys.”

“Liz.”

“You know her.”

“I don’t know—”

“Don’t lie to me, Mom.”

“I’m not!” With shaking hands, Mom poured herself a glass of wine. Sipped.

“You know her,” I repeated. “She used to work with Dad. She called me because there was a year of data missing from one of her patient files, and when she looked again, the entire file had been deleted, as if he didn’t exist. She wouldn’t give me any details, I don’t know his name, why he was there, but she said he was a patient of both Dad and Dr. Klein, and it wasn’t the first time she’d noticed something wonky in the files. Do you know why she called me?” I answered before my mom could respond. “Because Georgia Rollins, Klein’s assistant, told her to reach out to me if she learned anything that could help Dad. When did she say this to Liz? Right after she sent me on a wild-goose chase in February then quit her job and vanished!”

“Margo—”

“I went to see Dad today. Why would he protect a killer? You know he’s innocent and you let him go to prison!”

“Margo!” she snapped, sounding more herself, but with a hard edge to her voice. “Stop.”

“I’m not backing down.”