“Archer, you were right,” Leah marveled. “You said it yourself on the way back from ICC: It was right in front of our faces.”
“And I didn’t recognize him.” Archer was wearing the dazed expression of someone who was still standing despite taking a beating from a larger, more skillful opponent. “Why would I? It’s been ten years. And they have the same build, the same coloring, sometimes people thought they were twins. If you look at the old pictures, you can see it.” In his shock, his eyes showed the whites all around. “My dad’s the one in the ground. Donald Drake—the ‘good’ brother—he’s the one who’s been locked up all this time.”
“That’s why he wouldn’t see us,” Mitchell said. He looked as punch-drunk as Archer did. “He couldn’t stand to look at any of us, knowing what he’d done. We were kids, but he must have been scared we’d recognize him and blab.”
“We’ve been in a soap opera for ten years!”
“Not even a good one, like Days of our Lives,” Paul added, almost tearful. “A dumb, shitty one, like Judge Judy.”
“Wait. Wait. You’ve got it wrong.” Jack was rubbing his face, smearing tears. “All of you. Think about it—Daddy just turned himself over to the police and said, ‘Hi, I’m Dennis and I want to go to prison now’? And nobody questioned it? How is that possible?”
When was the last time he used the word “Daddy”? It’s been years. Ten, in fact. “Who would he have to fool? Fellow inmates? The COs?”
“Who’s gonna say ‘What’s this, you’re reading Shakespeare? How out of character, that seems more like something Donald would do, you must be an imposter, someone get this man a new lawyer!’”
“That . . . seems farfetched,” Archer admitted.
“But that’s crazy!” Jack said. “It wouldn’t have even gotten that far before he would have been busted. If nothing else, Mom would have—”
He cut himself off so abruptly, Angela heard his teeth click together. Her heart cracked for him in that moment. Because in order to believe in the Drake brothers switcharoo, you had to first acknowledge that . . .
“She was in on it.”
“Worse,” Leah said gently. “It would have been her idea. There’s no other way this would have worked. And for whatever reason, your father went along with it.”
“But why?”
The memory bubbled up to the surface again: her father, holding a bulging suitcase.
I never would have left him. And he never would have left me.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Angela was already slinging her purse over one shoulder. “I’m going to go ask her.”
Jason, who appeared to have been waiting for her to reach that conclusion, got up and held the door for her. “You know where she went.”
“I know where she went.” Angela took a breath. “Will you take me there?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t want to go,” Jack said at once. “I can’t.” The oven timer went off and she’d never seen him look so relieved. “Because of the pudding.”
“It’s fine.”
“I’m not going, either. I might actually kill her. Kill her for real, not ‘kill her but not really and then sit in jail for a decade’ kill her,” Archer said.
“You guys stay here and keep Jack company, okay?” She was amazed when uncharacteristicly quiet nods were the only response. A hundred years ago, she would have loved the deference. Now it looked wrong. Felt wrong.
“Felt wrong.” Oh, boy, that was putting it mildly.
She pulled a Kleenex from her purse, handed it to Jack, watched him wipe his eyes. “I’ll go take care of this.”
He sniffed and looked up at her. “How?”
“I don’t know.”
I might kill her, too, Archer. For putting that look on Jack’s face, if nothing else.
“Let’s go,” she said, and Jason was right behind her.
FORTY-NINE
It was a loooooooong drive. Angela sat with her arms crossed and her teeth clenched and her feet braced against the floor mat, mind whirling, peeking at Jason out of the corner of her eye.
A few miles in, she realized he was giving her the side-eye, too. This is insane. And this car ride might be the strangest part. No, my dad being alive is the strangest part. A snort escaped before she could lock it back. She crammed both hands over her mouth in a frantic attempt to block the noise, then made the mistake of glancing at Jason, whose eyes were watering with the effort of not laughing.
They lost it at the same time, each indulging in one of those full-body belly laughs that leave you gasping for breath. Jason had to pull over on a side street and park, and they both abandoned themselves. When they’d calmed down some, and Jason was wiping his eyes, she turned toward him, thinking she’d start with “Can you believe this shit?” or “Bet you’re glad I broke it off last night” or “Will you hold my Mom down while I punch her in the throat?”
Instead, she started to cry. And somehow she was in his arms
(how long have I been able to teleport?)
and she was sniveling into his neck and rubbing her face against his stubble just a bit, just a little tiny bit so she wouldn’t get tears on his shirt because dammit, she was considerate that way.
“I’m so sorry,” he was murmuring into her hair. “I can’t imagine. Can’t imagine.”
“It’s a nightmare.” She sniffed. “An ongoing nightmare where, in between the horror reveals, I get laid, which I have to admit is a new one.” She pulled back to look at him. “How’d you know? How’d you figure it all out?”
So he told her about Kline and, in a way, it was the most infuriating thing of all: A random phone call had brought answers she’d been seeking for a decade. What were the odds of Klown retiring and Archer falling for Leah Nazir, setting in motion a cascade reaction that ended up with Dennis—with Donald shrieking the truth at Intake Processing?
Wait. Think that over again.
“Jeez. Maybe the universe really did want this to happen. I thought Leah would solve it, or point us in a new direction, and in a way . . . But now I don’t know what to think.” She rested her forehead on his warm shoulder for a few seconds, then pulled back into her bucket seat. “Thank you for coming to the house. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“Devastating,” he said simply. “But in the interest of full disclosure, I was thrilled to finally have answers. I ran two red lights getting over there.”
“I can’t condone your rampant disregard for the law, but it’s an understandable reaction.” A line from The Silence of the Lambs—the book, not the movie—had always stuck with her: “‘Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.’” She knew exactly why he’d been compelled to race over.
He fished out some napkins and handed them over. She blew her nose and tidied up as best she could. Flipped down the visor, observed her reddened, weepy eyes. Groaned.
In the low tone of a man confessing his greatest, most humiliating sin, Jason leaned over and murmured: “I streamed Poltergeist. It was horrifying. They just left the bodies! They only moved the headstones!”
That nearly set her off again. “That movie ruined chicken legs and closet ghosts for me. I already hated clown dolls, so that was all fine. You watched it?”
“I said, didn’t I?”
“Ah. So I should always trust you will be a man of your word. Is that the message?”
“The message is, when a small round woman with a childlike voice declares the house is clean, it isn’t.”
“Point,” she conceded.
He had been smiling, but sobered and caught her gaze again. “Angela, I’ll take you wherever you wish, whenever you wish, but in terms of you and me, these new revelations are meaningless. They were not added to an imaginary column of negatives.”
He really was a witch! “How did you know I kept imaginary columns of— Never mind. Go on.”