Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,112

for my mother to have someone in her life. I know better than anyone that my father had been her entire world. The years since have been rough for her. I’m glad she has someone like Mr. Delaney in her life.

“I would be honored to be in a relationship with her,” Mr. Delaney continues now, “if I was the kind of guy interested in a relationship with a beautiful woman.”

It takes a moment for me to register what he has just said. The car ahead of us begins to move again. We edge forward. I feel like my head is in spin cycle, my brain the image of the whirling symbol on a smartphone as it struggles to load content. Wait a minute. Does that mean?

Suddenly, with a little click, I get everything I never truly noticed before. The incredibly handsome man beside me who never married, never had children of his own. Flirted shamelessly with every female in the room but never arrived or left with any one woman on his arm. I had watched ladies’ interest in him and, given his charming smiles, assumed he was a player of the highest order. But again, for my entire childhood, then adulthood, no girlfriend, no serious relationship.

I feel ridiculously stupid.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He smiles gently. “It’s not something I talk about. My parents weren’t exactly open-minded on the subject.”

“Haven’t they passed away?”

“Old habits die hard. Close friends and associates know my preferences, but it’s not something I advertise.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

“Whatever for?”

“Because … Because you shouldn’t have to say who you are. You shouldn’t have to feel self-conscious. And you shouldn’t have to explain yourself to an idiot like me. Not that I care,” I hasten to add, then realize that came out wrong. “I care about you,” I correct. “I don’t care about who you date.”

“As long as it’s not your mother?” he asks slyly.

“Ha. Please tell me I don’t have to ask about my father.” I roll my eyes, clearly joking.

The look he gives me has me going wide-eyed.

“What? Wait! No way.”

He starts to laugh, and just like that, I know he’s played me. Good God, I have to start sleeping more, because every time I think I’m starting to understand my family, my worldview gets turned upside down again.

“Both my parents knew?” I ask, trying to regain my bearings.

“I understood who I was by the time I got to college. Your father figured it out first. As I said, it wasn’t something I advertised. His complete and total acceptance was very dear to me, at a time in my life when I was still struggling to be comfortable with myself.”

I almost say I’m sorry again, then catch myself.

“Your mother … She toyed with me for months. Had eyes only for your father, of course, but felt a need to keep me in the mix, most likely in an attempt to make him jealous. We didn’t bother to correct her. It was too much fun to watch her work. I believe when I finally broke the news, she slapped me—for lying—then hugged me in sheer relief that there was a good reason I hadn’t yet succumbed to her charms. Your mother is a complicated woman.”

“Tell me about it,” I mutter.

“She does love you.”

I shrug. “She is the sun. She will always be the sun. I can only orbit around her, and sometimes, that’s really draining.”

“She is who she is, just as I am who I am.”

“Is that what the three of you had in common? My mother, who needs what she needs, whether she wants to or not. My father, whose brain worked the way it worked whether he wanted it to or not. And you, who preferred who you preferred, whether you wanted to or not.”

“The three misfits,” Mr. Delaney concedes.

It’s hard for me to think of my parents that way. My father had always been the genius, while my mother has always been the gorgeous hostess, every frosted strand of hair. Add to that Mr. Delaney, the silver fox himself, one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Boston …

But before all of that, they were kids. Given my own awkward years, is it really so strange to think they had their own?

“Do you want to know another secret?” Mr. Delaney asks me.

“Yes!”

“Back in those days, I was a complete reprobate.”

“A wild child?”

“They say inside every criminal defense lawyer is an excellent criminal, hence our ability to be so good at our jobs. I met