planning on warning your mother about the investigation…I just lost it. I just lost it.” He looked out the French doors to the pool and the parking lot. “I just hope one day Jeannie will be able to forgive me, because I’m never going to be able to forgive myself.”
“You’re a liar!” Dana shouted at Todd. “He’s a liar!” she shouted at her father.
Dad just looked at her with his sad, shadowed eyes and said nothing at all.
Dana shoved both hands into her hair as if she were trying to keep her head from flying off. She had to get out of here, right this second. Because something terrifying was happening in her. Something was twisting in her mind, trying to lay what Todd was saying over top of what she knew was the truth. Memory and reality were both shifting, right inside her.
“Dana, please!” Dad started halfway to his feet but didn’t make it and just dropped back down. “I’m trying to help you. Your mom—she’s got problems.”
“We tried to help her, but we didn’t have the money,” Todd said. “She’s kept you away from us all this time because she didn’t want you to know how badly she’s been lying her whole life.”
Dad nodded, way too fast.
“We realized something was wrong when she was little,” Todd said. “Even then, she was always lashing out. She’d lie and argue about every little thing. None of the teachers could control her. We couldn’t keep her in school. We were constantly driving around to all these appointments, one specialist after another, to try to figure out what was wrong. And they just kept putting her on all these pills…I mean, it felt like dozens some days. She wouldn’t take them, and I almost couldn’t blame her,” he added in a whisper. “Anyway, nothing helped, and in the end…she just ran away.” His hands fell to his sides. “We looked for her for years. But every time we got close, she’d disappear again. Finally, we just stopped trying.
“We tried to keep an eye out, you know, a little, online and stuff. But we were scared in case she got mad…She could be so violent. We didn’t want to set her off.”
Red. Red and stars and the hard sidewalk and more red on Mommy’s hands and her feet and her face and…
No. No. Don’t listen. This is not true!
“But then, the feds found us, and they were asking questions about her. We couldn’t tell them much, but…we were worried, and we thought maybe, because of you, we should tell your dad, so he could get you away before…well, before it all came crashing down.”
Dad jumped in. “And that’s when we found out about the money stuff, and we started putting two and two together.”
“That’s what’s going on, Dana,” said Todd. “That’s the truth.”
Do not let this guy use his spin on you. None of this is the truth, and you know it!
Dana folded her arms. “Then how come Jeannie wants to leave you, huh? How come she’s in the hospital dying of cancer and saying—”
“I know where she is,” said Todd softly. “I heard from her just this morning.”
“You…she called you?”
“Yeah. Jeannie’s terrified. Your mom was threatening her. I’m…I’m surprised she even let her get as far out of sight as the hospital.”
Dad was trying to smile, but he just looked as sick as she felt. “Dana, I know what a shock this is, but there’s no need to panic. There’s a way out for everybody. That’s what we want to talk to you about. We just need you to do one thing.”
Dana scowled. “What?”
Dad rubbed his hands together again, and he glanced at Todd, like he was asking permission. Dana threw her hands up and let them drop—slap—against her sides.
“We told you—your mother has a bunch of accounts with the money she’s hidden,” Dad said. “They’re all password-protected and stuff. All you have to do is find the account numbers and passwords, and give them to me. I’ll give them to the investigators when they show up. Then they’ll know I had nothing to do with any of this.”
You think this is about you! For a minute, Dana thought she was going to be sick. Then she thought she might laugh. Finally, something was exactly like normal. Her father was in the middle of an enormous disaster and worrying about what would happen to him.
And she had no idea how she was going to pull him out of it.
Except maybe one.
Dana faced