Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,70

myself say. “I thought he was everything I could ever want. Outgoing, funny, compassionate. He sought me out. He looked at me. He wanted to talk to me. He wanted to be with me. I know it sounds awful. Like an exercise in narcissism. But in my whole life, it never felt like anyone wanted me. Then, after my father died—”

“And you took the blame.”

“Let’s just say if I was the quiet weird kid before, I was the scary weird kid after.” I shrug.

“You know, your father worried you’d be gifted like him.”

“He worried?”

“It’s a lonely life, in case you didn’t notice. His brain was exceptional because it didn’t work like anyone else’s. But it put him forever out of step with others. Even in elite math circles, he stood out.”

“One of the greatest minds of his generation,” I intoned. And suddenly, I feel like crying again, because I’d never wanted the genius, just the father, and I still missed him so much.

“If you loved Conrad,” Mr. Delaney asks softly, “what do you think happened to your relationship?”

I can’t answer right away. When I do, the words are hard to say. “I don’t think I’m good at marriage.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know how to trust. I don’t know how to … believe. The kinder Conrad was to me … the more I grew suspicious. I’d wonder what he wanted, what he wasn’t saying.”

“You thought he was being unfaithful?”

“I don’t know. He was gone so often on business trips, but when he came home, he didn’t want to talk about it. Life on the road is boring, he’d tell me. Let’s hear about your week. Except I didn’t believe he really wanted to learn about my week. He just didn’t want to talk about his.”

“You grew up in a household with adults who generally had an agenda.”

I have to smile because I know exactly whom he’s talking about. “My mom.”

“Some men do like to hear from the women they love.”

“I know. And I’d tell myself that. The problem is me. I believed my husband had secrets because, of course, I have this huge secret. But then, I’d notice little things, see little things …”

“Such as?”

“Conrad knew everyone. Every neighbor who stopped by, every fellow teacher of mine. He was a walking encyclopedia of names, faces, vital statistics. Except … no one knew Conrad. Where were his colleagues, family, friends? He’d told me his parents had died in an accident years ago. Our marriage was very small, at the courthouse because Mom—”

“Didn’t approve.”

“But month after month, year after year … All these people Conrad could tell you so much about, and yet no dinner with the neighbors, no guys’ night out. He always had an excuse. For someone who appeared so outgoing, if you stepped back, peered at him from a distance, he was a loner. Separate from all of us. Even with me.”

“Did you ever ask him about it?”

“He said he had me, he didn’t need anything more.”

“Romantic.”

I look Mr. Delaney in the eye. “Is it? Because my knee-jerk reaction was that he was lying. So again, was the problem him, or me?”

“Do you have close friends?”

I shrug, uncomfortable. “I have a colleague, another teacher at the school. She and I often have lunch together. But see, I know I’m antisocial. And frankly, given that I’ve spent my adult life being the woman who killed her own father, I have good reasons for being reserved. I admit to these things. Conrad … He came across one way, but over time if you paid attention …” I shake my head. “I felt sometimes he was less a person, and more a character in a play. He said the right things, but were they things he really meant, or just the next lines of dialogue?”

“You didn’t trust him.”

“I worried about it,” I say carefully. “The inconsistencies between what he said and what he actually did. Add to that the whole locked office in the privacy of his own home. Yet, when I tried to bring it up … he’d make me feel petty. Like I was being paranoid. I really couldn’t argue with that. They say liars are always the first to think others are lying. And let’s face it, for sixteen years now, I’ve been one helluva liar.”

“But you got pregnant.”

I smile roughly. “Ever hear of desperately-trying-to-save-your-marriage sex? We got pretty good at it.”

“All marriages are hard,” Mr. Delaney tells me. I know what he means, but I’m not sure all marriages are