Page 67 of Vengeful Vows

Albert slapped Keith on the face. He had never put his hand on his son. Not once had he raised his voice to him. But his hand swung across the table with ferocious intensity as if to make up for all the years of holding his fire. He regretted instantly.

“What do you mean she wasn’t supposed to die?” Albert’s voice roared. He waited patiently as his son stared at him with a blank stare. Tears trickling down his face, but there was no sobbing.

With the emotional experience that felt like a piece of his soul was cut with each additional revelation, Albert listened to his son narrate the events of the night. There was a regular graduation party which he sneaked into where he tried to mingle with others. Alyson did make a habit of visiting the house in Newton to see an old man for a long time, which made Keith furious. Alyson did leave the party with Andre Palermo and went to her apartment in Beacon Hill. Upon seeing Andre leave the building, Keith had gone inside to check on Alyson because he was worried about her safety. Keith had entered the apartment right behind Andre and headed to Alyson’s place surprised to find her door open, upon which time he ran inside convinced she must have been hurt. He had instead found her in her bedroom lying down and talking on the phone…

Albert listened to it all with the wound of hopelessness. He could finish the rest of the story. He could imagine how a startled Alyson Crawford might have reacted. And how his disillusioned son might have tried to calm her down professing his obsessive love for her…

It was insanity. No one in his right might would kill someone. Not his son… Another slap in the face as if Albert’s hand had a mind of its own. The meaty club of his palm and fingers left reddened flesh marks on the young Lloyd’s face.

There was no point continuing on with the confession. There was enough there to convict anyone without even the DNA evidence. Albert wondered if he cared whether his son paid the ultimate price for his crime or not. He walked out of the room to find Sloan. On his way out the door, he looked back and saw the same expression he had seen on his son’s face when he inquired about the case of the American exchange student in Italy.

It made sense to Albert where the elaborate sexual incident gone wrong narrative came from. The more unsettling realization was perhaps how his son might have searched for fame by doing the unthinkable for he couldn’t tell if he was still telling the whole truth.

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