He felt defensive, prodded to speak up. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.
Everyone swung to face him. You could hear the shush of the dishwasher in the stillness. Cameron felt his ears turning red. “She blew us off last month when her flight from Denver was delayed.”
“She called to say she would be late,” Lily stated in her know-it-all teacher voice.
“Yeah, but only after she was like four hours late, and Dad had already left town, too, for a tournament.” Cameron bristled with resentment. “I had to give the girls their supper and put them to bed.” He couldn’t help it. He glanced at the clock over the stove. Way more than four hours had passed. He wondered if he should say anything more. As the one person who had witnessed his parents’ marriage from a front-row seat, he knew things no one else possibly could.
“That’s completely different.” Uncle Sean spoke up, sounding more calm and reasonable than any of them. “Someone knew where they both were.”
Then it was his turn to be interviewed. “Mr. Maguire, can you characterize your relationship with your brother?”
Cameron ground his teeth in frustration. Here they were reviewing the history of his wacko family when they should be out searching for his parents. But where? Where?
Sean’s jaw developed a tic and Cameron sensed his impatience, too. He took a deep breath. “We’re half brothers. We have the same mother. His father passed away in the sixties and our mother married my father. We both grew up right here in Comfort. Both played golf, both went pro. I joined the Asian Tour and Derek kept his PGA card. I moved back here and I’m working at the country club.”
Cameron knew there was a lot more to that story. A whole lot more. Like the fact that Dad’s father had never been married to his mother and was broke when he died. And the fact that Grandma had married Patrick Maguire just six months later. And Uncle Sean was born just a few months after that. But that was all ancient history. It probably wouldn’t help them figure out where his parents had gone.
Something not so ancient burned inside him like a bleeding ulcer. He was never meant to know about Ashley, but he’d found out and now the weight of that crushed him. It wasn’t his to tell, he reminded himself, especially to a room full of strangers.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” the cop asked Sean.
“Last night. He came into the clubhouse for a drink, and we talked.”
“Did you get any sense that there was a problem?” asked Officer Franklin. “Any issues between your brother and his ex-wife?”
Just that they hated each other, Cameron thought bitterly. Just that they kept secrets from each other.
“None at all,” said Sean. “Crystal is the mother of his children, and he’s always been good to her.”
It was on the tip of Cameron’s tongue to address that statement, but he said nothing. He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t imagine talking to strangers about stuff he barely let himself think about. Besides, he could be wrong.
Now it was Lily’s turn to get skeptical. She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she pursed her lips as if thinking, “Uh-huh. I’m so sure.”
The kitchen phone shrilled suddenly. Cameron’s heart leaped. Everybody around the table jumped at the handset. Cameron grabbed it first. He was the one who lived here, after all.
“Hello.”
“Cameron, it’s Jane.”
Great, he thought. He looked at the four expectant faces around the table. “Jane,” he said.
“Derek’s girlfriend,” Uncle Sean explained to the cops.
“Do you know where my dad is?” Cameron asked her.
“Actually,” she said, “I was calling you with the same question.”
Cameron felt his hopes deflate like a pricked balloon. “I think you should probably come over,” he told her in a dull voice. “He and my mom haven’t come home and the police are here asking questions.”
There was a brief, fragile silence, and then she made a terrible sound, like there was something caught in her throat.
“Jane?” Cameron asked.
“I—um, I’ll come right over.”
“Girlfriend?” asked Officer Franklin.
“They’re very close,” Uncle Sean explained. He glanced at Cameron.
“You can talk about it in front of me. It’s not like I didn’t know,” Cameron said, trying to regain his equilibrium after the phone call. He preferred bored impatience to sick dread any day. “She was going to move in with him.”
“Does your mother know this?” asked Lily in an edgy voice.