against him and demand that he resume the make-out session they’d begun on the stairs.
“Ah, good,” Lisa was saying. “That’s one worry I can cross off. There’s really no reason for you to stay there any longer, is there? Why don’t you just come here? Please? I can tell by your tone of voice that you’re troubled. What’s going on?”
Arden drew her focus from near space to the investigation reports. “Lisa, in your heart of hearts, do you believe Dad committed those crimes? Don’t answer as my guardian. We’re beyond that. You’ve done me no favors by shielding me from knowing the more appalling aspects of all this.
“I’ve reached this low point in my life because I’ve been spared the worst. Please, from now on, be brutally honest with me like you were yesterday. Tell me true. Did he do it?”
Lisa took a long time before answering. “If the father that I knew was guilty, I think that rather than put us—all three of us—through the humiliation of a criminal investigation, a trial, and probable conviction, he would have chosen to make a clean break.”
“So,” Arden said quietly, “his running away could be construed as an admission of guilt.”
Lisa hesitated, then asked, “What else would have compelled him to abandon his children?”
This answer was the most difficult for Arden to accept. “The money.” She whispered the two condemning words.
“Yes,” Lisa said. “Compared to Wallace’s net worth, five hundred thousand would be a negligible amount. But to Dad, given his situation, his destitution, it would have represented a ticket out.”
Or as Ledge had succinctly put it: Flight.
Chapter 25
That night in 2000—Joe
Joe had gotten through the entire day without taking so much as a nip. He’d tinkered in the detached garage, organizing tools that he never used anymore. He’d weeded the beds of his late wife’s rosebushes, which hadn’t bloomed since her death because only she knew the proper nutrients to feed them. He’d oiled every door hinge in the house, even those that didn’t squeak.
He did anything he could think of to keep his mind occupied and hands too busy to pour a drink.
When Lisa had called him to supper, the first thing he’d noticed was the basket of Easter eggs on the dining table. The centerpiece had so reminded him of Marjorie, it had almost been his undoing. Somehow, though, he’d gotten through the meal without revealing his desperate craving for the anesthetizing effects of Jim Beam.
He’d even coaxed a few giggles out of Arden. Once a bouncy, chatty, and cheerful girl, she had become much more subdued after losing her mother. Her personality change was his fault, just as Lisa’s increasing brittleness was. He was failing them as a provider and as a parent.
Lisa was competent beyond her years. She’d been unfairly burdened with new responsibilities, but was managing well enough juggling them and her studies. He had no doubt she would make her own future.
It was Arden he most worried about. She was still young and, to her great misfortune, dependent on him. With all his heart, he wanted to see that her future turned out to be much brighter than it portended.
After helping with the kitchen cleanup, he’d told the girls he was going out to the cemetery to tend Marjorie’s grave. “I would like all of us to go tomorrow. I want to spruce it up before you girls visit.”
Looking at him with scorn and suspicion, Lisa said, “What can you do out there? It’s already getting dark.”
“There’s lighting at the cemetery. Enough for me to see by.”
“It looks like rain.”
“I’m not going to melt.”
Lisa let it drop.
Whining, Arden asked if she could go with him. He reminded her that she had a new Disney film to watch. They’d picked it up in town that afternoon. “You don’t want to miss that.”
She’d looked dejected and rejected when he’d squeezed her shoulder and told her good night. He’d wanted to reassure her then that things would get better, but he lacked the courage to make that, or any, promise.
When he’d returned home hours later, only nightlights were on inside the house. He’d climbed the stairs and made it to his bedroom without being intercepted by either Lisa or Arden.
Once in his room, he’d opened the new bottle of whiskey and had begun steadily pouring drink after drink. Even so, he was still sober when his phone had buzzed and he’d seen Brian Foster’s name in LED.
Why the hell would Foster be calling him now? With a sense