both incidents.
Was I grossly overreacting? I tried to think, though my brain was cloudy with rage. My stepfather knew something about the Joyces. He knew enough to know the name of the doctor who'd "treated" Mariah Parish.
He knew. And I believed he also knew what had happened to my sister. All these years, he'd kept it from me.
I felt it in my bones.
I couldn't go into the living room and grab him by the neck. He was too strong for me. Tolliver wouldn't let me kill his father. Probably even Manfred, who had no personal stake in the matter, would feel obliged to intervene. But Tolliver was weak and injured, and Manfred would leave sooner or later.
It took all the self-control I could muster to break away from seriously considering how to kill my stepfather.
For one thing, it would be wrong. Maybe. For another thing, a much more important thing, I didn't know enough. I wanted to find my sister's final resting place. I wanted to be sure I knew what had happened to Cameron.
To that end, I had to be prepared to tolerate Matthew's presence.
I worked on it, there alone in the dark. I schooled myself to be strong. And then I got up and turned on the light and washed my face, as if I could wash the new knowledge off of it and return to what had been my happy ignorance.
I went out into the living room, having to move slowly. I felt I'd been kicked in the ribs-fragile, and sore with the suspicion and loathing I carried inside.
I could tell immediately that Matthew wanted Manfred to leave so he could talk to his son alone, and Manfred had not wanted to leave until he spoke to me again. He looked from Matthew to me as I came into the room, and he shuddered. Whatever Manfred saw in me, neither Tolliver nor Matthew could see. That was a good thing.
"Manfred," I said. "I'm sorry I flaked out on you. Thanks for going with me today."
"No problem," Manfred said, leaping to his feet with an alacrity that told me how anxious he was to get out of this hotel room. "Would you like to go out and get a cup of coffee with me? Or do you need me to take you to the store? Got enough... potato chips?" He was reaching, there. We never ate potato chips. I felt a smile twitch at the corners of my mouth. "Thanks, Manfred." I debated quickly inside myself. Manfred wanted to talk to me about what I now realized was our mutual recognition of Matthew, but I didn't know yet what I was going to do. Better to avoid the t锚te-?-t锚te until I had made a plan. "I guess I'll stick around here in case Tolliver needs me."
I hugged him, acting on an impulse. His bones felt small as my arms circled his body. Somewhat hesitantly, he hugged me back. He was floundering under the psychic image he'd gotten from me. If he could see anything like the way I felt, then he'd seen something awful and murderous. "Don't do it," he said into my ear, and I let go of him and stood back.
"Don't worry, we'll be fine," I said reassuringly. "I'll call you if I need help, I promise."
"Well... okay. I do have some readings to work on this afternoon. But my cell phone's always charged up and in my pocket. 'Bye, Tolliver. Mr. Lang." And with a last hard look directly into my eyes, Manfred was out the door, walking swiftly down the hall without a backward glance.
"What a flake," said Matthew. "Tolliver, you hang out much with people like that? He must be a friend of yours, Harper."
"He is a friend of mine," I said. "His grandmother was, too." I felt really strange, kind of out of myself. Matthew was sitting beside Tolliver on the couch, so I took the chair. I crossed my legs and wrapped my hands around my top knee. "It was really messy outside this morning, wasn't it, Matthew?"
He looked surprised. "Yeah, traffic was a bitch. It always is in Dallas. Raining, too."
"Did you have errands to run this morning?"
"Oh, a few things I had to do. I have to be at work at two thirty."
Was he really working at McDonald's? Or was he meeting one of the Joyces? Had he always been in their pay?
And the man I loved most in the world, the only person I truly loved, was this