“Why did you wait so long?”
Loaded question. He’d balked at directly confronting the possibility that either of his parents was guilty or bore some of the responsibility for something so terrible.
Or maybe he’d only been clinging to the comfort of feeling numb. And no wonder. He wasn’t enjoying the reawakening of painful memories.
“I always had the goal of becoming a detective,” he told her. That was true enough. “I wanted to know I had the skills to open a cold case.”
“So...how are you going about it?”
He made his answer vague, talking in general about investigative methods. Finally he shrugged. “I may hit a dead end, but I have to try.”
Tess nodded, but still looked perplexed. “I can see why your sister’s murder created a wedge between your parents, but I don’t understand what it had to do with you and your brother.”
“We were each angry at the other parent. And angry at each other for supporting the wrong parent. Contact just...dwindled.” He shrugged. “It happens.”
“I suppose so,” she said slowly.
“Finding Bran again was...” He finally settled for simple. “Really good. But our relationship isn’t easy. I don’t know if it ever will be. He gets mad if I even hint that Dad might have done it, and I have trouble understanding how he could have stayed in this area, become a cop and then a detective, and yet never seriously investigated. It’s like...” He hesitated.
“He doesn’t want to find out what actually happened,” she finished for him.
That was his guess, too.
“It means, deep down, he’s afraid your dad did do it.”
That would be it. And this conversation was over. He pushed back his chair. “I don’t know about you, but I could use that cup of coffee now.”
She watched him steadily but didn’t comment on his retreat. Zach did hate having to let go of her hand. But, damn, as hard as he’d been squeezing, she was lucky he hadn’t crunched any bones.
She rose and cleared the table while he started the coffee. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she put leftovers in what containers she could find. The gleam of the kitchen light off her glossy hair kept catching his eye. He’d like to feel it slipping between his fingers while he kissed her. One long step and he could tug her into his arms. Lean back against the counter, maybe, and pull her close. Her long body would align perfectly with—
“There should be enough for your dinner tomorrow night,” she said.
He blinked. Enough...? Oh.
“You know you may never find out for sure, don’t you?” she said.
Great. Did they have to circle back around to this? Even so, he made himself think about what she’d said. It was true that he’d tried to make himself accept the possibility—no, likelihood—of failure, but he wasn’t sure he really had. “I tend to be stubborn. You ask one question at a time and keep asking them.” He released a long breath, knowing he was being evasive. “But, yes. Of course, I know.”
“If your father did it...”
Her hesitation told him where she was going with this. “Then he took the truth with him to the grave. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Her eyes were big and somber and so damn beautiful. “I suppose.”
Best way to get her off the subject would be to kiss her.
Yeah, but he needed to think long and hard about the consequences of starting anything more with her.
“Bran and my father must have talked about it,” he argued. “If I can get Bran to open up...”
“But surely he and your father wouldn’t have stayed close if he’d made any kind of admission.”
“That’s true, but maybe Bran deliberately misunderstood something Dad said.”
She frowned, thoughtful. “What do you think? Looking back, was there anything that bothers you in how he treated your sister?”
He shifted irritably as they sat back down. “Who thinks that way as a kid? You take your parents for granted.” He didn’t want to answer, because if he’d had faith in his father then, his childhood would have been different. He wouldn’t have lost his brother. “No,” he said hoarsely. “If he hadn’t lied about being up during the night, I never would have thought it was possible he’d do something like that.”