"Thanks to you," her father said bitterly, sending Blake another daggered look.
"Let's go inside," Blake suggested. He walked to the open front door and waited.
Her dad hesitated, looking like he preferred to jump into his car and make a run for it.
"Please, Dad," she said. "We have to talk—all of us."
Her dad's gaze suddenly moved to Jax. "Who's he?"
"He's a friend. He's helping me unravel the mystery surrounding Natasha's death. He knows everything that I know, and whatever you tell me, I'm going to tell him. I trust him. Which means you can trust him."
"I will not share whatever is said here," Jax confirmed.
Finally, her father closed the car door and walked up to the porch.
She blew out a breath and gave Jax a quick look. She could see the concern in his eyes, but he urged her forward, and they followed her father and Blake into the house.
They sat down in the living room and for a moment, there was nothing but a tense silence. Finally, her father looked at her and said, "You were right about the bag of food in my mother's car. It wasn't for her; it was for me."
Her heart sped up. "You were in the car that night?"
"For a few minutes, yes."
"Why only a few minutes?"
"She picked me up from soccer practice. I was supposed to take the bus home. I was waiting at the stop when she showed up. I didn't want to go with her, because she'd tried to lecture me about drugs a few days before that, and I couldn't stand that she thought she had the right to say anything to me about anything. She abandoned me. She'd given up the right to be my mother."
She could see her father was getting worked up in his bitter resentment. "But you did go with her?"
"Yes."
"What happened after you got in the car?"
"She told me she'd gotten me food, and she drove me to a park where no one else was around. It was important to her that no one was ever around the two of us. She probably didn't want photos of her being a bad mother or having an unappreciative son."
"She took you to the park? Which park? The park where she was killed?"
"Yes. But the car had been moved. We were by the boathouse. She was found in her car nearer to the entrance."
That was an interesting piece of information. She filed that away to think about later. "What did you talk about?"
"She said she was worried about me. I told her that she'd given up that right and I wanted nothing to do with her. I said she was a horrible mother, that she was selfish, that it was always about her and no one else. That's basically it."
"What did she say?" Maya asked, seeing strain in her father's eyes.
"Nothing. I wouldn't let her talk. I told her there was nothing she could say that would make me like her, much less love her, and then I got out of the car, and I ran. I ran for miles. When I was finally gasping for breath, I took a bus home. My father and Linda were in the house, and I didn't want to see them, so I came here. Blake was out by the pool."
"And he made you tequila sunrises," she said, remembering what Blake had told her earlier.
"Yes. I told him what happened, and we got drunk in the pool house. I must have passed out. I woke up and it was morning. And then my dad came over. He looked like I'd never seen him before. He told me that my mother was dead. That she'd died in her car. That she'd shot heroin into her veins."
"The drugs were yours," she said, horror running through her.
Her father gave her a bleak, grim look. "Yes. She had yanked open my backpack, and they spilled out in the car. I wasn't actually taking them; I was selling them. But I didn't tell her that. I wanted her to think I'd become an addict because of her. When I ran, I didn't take the drugs with me."
Her jaw dropped. She couldn't believe what he was saying. "I don't understand. You were selling drugs?"
"For Blake," he said, looking over at him. "If my secrets are coming out, so are yours."
"It was thirty-six years ago," Blake said. "Neither one of us was the same person after that night. We grew up. We changed. We did better. And you couldn't