The Last Breath (16 page)

Jeffrey leans back, resting an arm over the back of the booth, and studies me for a long moment. “Let me get this straight. You’re giving me the affair with Dean in exchange for a quick turnaround?”

“On one condition. You can’t mention news of the affair came from me. Dad doesn’t know, and he’ll be devastated. I can’t do that to him on top of...” My words dissolve into a shrug. “But feel free to snoop around, ask people. Maybe somebody else will remember something.”

“I’ll start with Allison Sullivan.”

I half nod, half shrug. “You’ll have to find her first. She disappeared after the trial.”

“I’ll find her. And after your father’s death?”

It doesn’t take me long to consider my answer. After Dad’s gone, nobody, not even Cal, will care about Ella Mae’s cheating, only the implications of who it was with. “Then I’ll tell you everything I remember, and you can quote every word. Just keep me updated in the meantime, okay? And hurry.”

He reaches an arm across the table, and we shake.

The waitress appears at the end of the booth, sliding the check onto the table between us. When I reach for my wallet, Jeffrey shoos my hand away.

“Oh, hell no. This one is on me.” He slaps two twenties onto the table, weights them down with his empty glass. “Can I ask you something?”

I nod.

“There are about a hundred hungry journalists circling your house right now. Why me? Why not someone flashier, someone with a major news network behind them?”

“That’s easy.” I grab my coat and bag, slide out of the booth. “Because you were the first person other than Cal to tell me my father should have never gone to prison.”

21

EVEN ASLEEP, MY
father looks angry. Brows knitted, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched. His lips are scrunched into a hard line that drives both corners downward, and his hands clutch the wool blanket in tight fists atop his chest. Even his dark brown hair, now thinning above the temples, sticks out in wild, almost feral peaks on his head. He doesn’t open his eyes when I approach his bed.

Neither does Fannie. Snoring softly in an armchair next to him, she naps with the wild abandon of a toddler, or perhaps a disaster aid worker on a ten-minute break. Her arms and legs are flopped wide, her mouth is hanging slack and open, and her head is thrown back against the cheap chenille fabric. Yet somehow, she makes her awkward position look comfortable.

I give her arm a shake. For someone so sound asleep, Fannie awakens with surprising clarity. She sits up and smiles.

“Why don’t you go take a break,” I whisper, gesturing toward my father. “I’ll sit with him for a bit.”

She nods, reaching fluidly for her clogs, and pushes to a stand. “Of course, darlin’,” she says in a stage whisper. “I’ll just be in the kitchen, making us some tea.” And then she stretches her arms to the ceiling and waddles off.

I sink into her still-warm chair and look at my father, feeling my stomach flip. I’ve had sixteen years of wandering the globe to distance myself mentally from him, from his constant cries of injustice and from my guilt at not believing his innocence, but for my father, the anger and resentment must still feel as fresh as when he was carted away in handcuffs.

“Oh, Daddy,” I whisper. His skin is still so orange, and his body barely makes a bump under the blanket. “I’m so sorry.”

“Huh?” He snorts, then cracks open an eye. “Oh, it’s you.”

“It’s me!” I say brightly. “I thought I’d keep you company for a while.”

Now both eyes open, but neither of them look particularly happy to see me. “Where’s Frannie?”

Fannie,
I think but bite my tongue. “Making tea in the kitchen. Doesn’t that sound good?”

Dad doesn’t respond, other than to look at me like he can see right through me to the wall. His narrowed gaze gives me an extra jolt of nerves. I feel my face reddening.

“You must be thirsty.”

“I’m not.”

I lean forward to straighten a nonexistent fold in his blanket. “When’s the last time you had something to drink?”

Dad’s reply is to clamp his lips, close his eyes and turn his head. He stays like that for so long my gaze drops to his chest, just to make sure his lungs are still filling and falling with breath.

“Okay, then. How about something to eat? I picked up the ingredients for beef Stroganoff for tonight. That was always one of your favorites, right?”

“I can’t eat meat,” he says to the wall.

“Vegetarian stroganoff it is.” I look around the room for a magazine or book. “Can I get you anything to read? Or another blanket, maybe? Are you cold?”

Now Dad opens his eyes, but only to glare at me.

“What? I’m just trying to make conversation.”

“That’s not conversation.” He twists his lips into a sarcastic grimace. “That’s triage.”

“Sorry,” I mumble, flushing again. I know I’m trying too hard, plugging every moment of silence with inane chatter, filling the already fraught air with my overly enthusiastic voice. Dad is clearly becoming more and more annoyed with me. His fingers twist and yank on the blanket.

But ever since that moment in the truck with Jake earlier this morning, when he jiggled loose a long-forgotten memory, I’ve been struggling with how to form an acceptable apology. All day long, my emotions have been dangerously close to the surface because really, what words are adequate enough for sixteen years’ worth of silence? What words can convey the guilt and sorrow I feel at presuming my own father guilty? What words could possibly make him forgive me?

“Why don’t you just spit it out already?” he says as if reading my thoughts.

“Of course.” I straighten on the chair, my insides squirming like a bucket of night crawlers. “Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m here to tell you that I’m sorry. For taking off after the trial, and for not writing or visiting you while you were in prison. And I’m sorry for disappearing the first night you were back, and all those other times since. Me not being here was more about me than about you.”

Dad all but rolls his eyes. “Can I ask why this sudden change of heart?”

I chew on the inside of my cheek, stalling as I come up with a response. I gave Cal my word I wouldn’t tell about Ella Mae’s infidelity, which basically negates the I-know-Dean-lied portion of my argument. Besides, I’m not entirely certain a confession of my returned memory would even help my case. Dad would see right through me, would think it an attempt to take the pressure off myself and put it squarely and conveniently on Dean. No, I decide, better to keep things honest but diplomatic and vague.

“Because I feel like we have a lot of time to make up for, and not enough time to do it in. I know I haven’t been here for you these past sixteen years, but I want to be here for you now. That is, if you’ll let me.”

“That depends.” He dips his chin to his chest, looking at me through his frown in a way I remember well from childhood. “Who do you think killed Ella Mae?”

I hesitate and chill bumps sprout on every inch of my skin, but not for the reason Dad thinks. It’s because before my brain can form a calculated response, my gut screams, Dean Sullivan. I think Dean Sullivan killed Ella Mae.

“Because twelve of my so-called peers thought I did,” he continues, “and so did pretty much the rest of Rogersville, including my own children. Including you.”

“I never, not once, said I thought you were the killer.”

Dad snorts, and his hands fist tighter around the blanket. “You didn’t have to. Your silence, as they say, was a helluva lot louder than those words could have ever been. Words which, by the way, you’re doing a darn good job going out of your way to avoid saying now.”

The way he watches me, with eyes that are both furious and hopeful at the same time, is too much. Tears burn in my eyes.

“There was a witness,” he says as if I need reminding, “one who saw me breaking into my own house the night Ella Mae was murdered. Who else could it have been? Nothing was stolen. There were no valuables missing. Even Ella Mae’s wedding ring was still on her finger when the police got here.”

Stop,
I think.

“Maybe I panicked. Maybe that person breaking in really was me, trying to cover my tracks.”

I shake my head insistently, almost violently. “Stop.”

Dad doesn’t stop. He pushes up onto an elbow, curling his entire face into an ugly sneer. “Ella Mae was cheating on me, you know.”

I startle at both his hateful tone and his revelation—so Cal lied? Dad knew about the affair? But Dad doesn’t seem to notice my widened eyes, doesn’t hear my pounding heart. Does he know it was with Dean?

“How Cal managed to keep that little tidbit under wraps during the trial is a goddamn miracle,” he says, “but Ella Mae was cheating, and she was planning to file for divorce. So maybe we fought, and maybe things got out of hand. Maybe I would have rather seen her dead than with another man.”

A shot of outrage at his goading bolts through my veins, catapulting me to the edge of my seat. “Daddy, stop! Okay? Just stop.”

“Why? I’m just repeating what everybody else is saying.”

A sudden lump takes root in my throat, one that takes three or four tries to swallow down. By this time next month, my father will in all likelihood be dead, so screw vague and diplomatic. Screw my promise to Cal. I opt instead for honesty. Honesty, and the words that have been sixteen years in the making.

“Because I know Dean lied, and I know with every ounce of me that you didn’t do what everybody says you did. And I’m so unbelievably sorry it’s taken me this long to tell you I believe you. You didn’t kill Ella Mae. It’s simply not possible.”

It’s not pure relief that swallows up his face at my words. Some relief, certainly, but so diluted with another emotion—regret, maybe?—that it’s almost unrecognizable. Still, he doesn’t say anything, so I plow on.

“And I shouldn’t have left you like I did. Without saying goodbye or telling you where I was going. Without ever writing or visiting you in prison. Of all the things I have to be sorry for, that’s the one I regret most.”

His brows dip, and he searches my face for a long moment. “You’re most sorry for leaving?”

I nod, a little surprised by the lack of aggression in his voice. It’s the first time since I’ve been home he hasn’t sounded bitter or resentful. In fact, his voice is devoid of any emotion at all, a development I think cannot be good.

He purses his lips and looks away, his gaze drifting to the milky sunlight streaming through the window, and my stomach twists with a wave of ill. I’ve waited too long. My apology is too late. And honestly, who can blame him? I wouldn’t forgive me, either.

“Do you remember the first time you saw the ocean?”

Ocean? His sudden change of subject nearly knocks me off balance. I sift through my memories and manage a jerky nod. “Kind of.”

“Took you to Myrtle Beach, the summer after your mother died. You’d’ve been about six or so. You’d seen pictures by then, of course, but none of them prepared you for that first real look.” He turns back to me, his gaze locking on mine, his tone still in neutral. “You ’bout near fainted. Bo and Lexi splashed around in the waves, and you stood there with your little mouth hanging open, feet rooted in the sand, just staring and staring at the water. Do you remember what you said?”

I shake my head.

“You asked me what was on the other side.”

I don’t remember saying those words, exactly, but I can easily summon up another memory—of my stunned silence, of profound fascination with that great expanse of water. “That sounds like something I would’ve said.”

“Anyway, the point I’m tryin’ to make is that’s when I knew. Of the three of you kids, you were always going to be the one to leave. Your sister and brother don’t have that kind of curiosity. They never did. But you...” He puffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I swear. What six-year-old asks what’s on the other side of the ocean?”

I don’t share in my father’s sudden levity. I can’t. I’m too busy trying to sort out what Dad’s anecdote might mean for my choice of career and nomadic lifestyle. “I always thought I left because of what happened.”

Dad gives me a look. “What was the first thing on your Christmas list every year?”

I don’t have to think, even for a second, about my answer. “A subscription to
National Geographic.
” Still the best seven bucks I spend every month.

“What did you beg us for that summer Bo went to college, and every summer after?”

“An exchange student.” I lift a shoulder, resurrect my age-old argument one last time. “His room was just sitting there, empty.”

“And when all your friends were getting cars for their sixteenth birthday, what did you ask for?”

“A backpack and a round-the-world ticket. It took me waiting tables all through college, but I left the day after graduation.”

“See?” He points a bony finger at my face. “No use fighting that kind of wanderlust. So stop beating yourself up for not staying, because I don’t blame you for leaving. Especially not after...” He sighs, rolling his head back toward the window. “Besides, at least you came back.”

His mouth doesn’t finish the sentiment, but everything else about him does. His pinched lips, his squinty eyes, the way his entire body tenses, then goes slack and haggard. He’s clearly struggling with his emotions, anger and disappointment and sorrow, barely holding it together because I came back, and Bo and Lexi didn’t.

A familiar well of indignation toward my siblings bubbles up inside me at the same time I’m slammed with a giant fist of pity for my father. How can I tell him Bo and Lexi aren’t in their cars around the corner, speeding this way? How can I tell him I’ve given up on my siblings?

But Dad must read the message from my silence. He puffs out another sigh, then closes his eyes. Before long, his breathing beats out a steady rhythm. This time, I let him sleep.

Outside, the chanting fades to a low rumble of conversation, and I walk over to the window and peek out. A car is stopped on the road, hazard lights flashing, and an overweight man in a puffy coat and mittens is passing out Starbucks cups. Funny how I’ve gotten so used to the chanting that I don’t notice until it melts away to nothing.

Kind of like what Bo and Lexi are doing with Dad.