He could be on the tape. Actual, live video. Would he seem different, with the perspective of another decade? Would she recognize him, distinguish him from this other man she was now learning about?
Her pulse quickened. Only one way to find out.
She pushed the tape into the VCR and hit play.
…
Sam ran his hand across the surface of the old desk. Smooth, save for the area where he’d gouged his name—and been properly punished for it—when he was four-years old.
His mother’d had this thing for as long as he could remember. Back before email, this was where she’d drafted all her correspondence. Now it seemed to be delegated to paying bills.
He felt shitty sitting here now, knowing he was going to be looking through her things to try and disprove the awful suspicions he was having. She was with Aunt Kathy right now. He expected he had at least half an hour before she returned.
But the curve of the writing in the notes they found…was familiar. Familiar from all the years of letters his mother had written him, letters he wished he had copies of so he could compare them with the image in his mind from today.
Elizabeth Margaret Fratto had a distinctive handwriting style.
And the woman in those damn letters talked about being alone. Until Jackson Williams came along, listened to her, cared for her, made her feel important again.
Back then, his father had not only been a surgeon—a time-consuming career for anyone, let alone a parent—but he’d also headed his own surgical practice with four other surgeons. Between his patients and the running of the practice, Sam and his mother hardly ever saw his father. And Sam? He had been a high school senior, wrapped up in applying to colleges, his friends, his photography stint for the school paper, soccer, girls. He hadn’t been around much, either.
She could have been lonely. She could have been susceptible to the charisma of the young Jackson Williams, even at six years her junior. Sam could see the attraction on both sides. His mother, after all, had always been beautiful.
He had to know, either way. He pulled open a drawer and started sifting through things. Nothing here except for copies of bills from the past few months and paper-clipped receipts organized by date. Very neat. The next drawer contained some old stationary, envelopes, pens, and self-addressed mailing stickers, as organized as the first. He couldn’t see anything that would help.
He looked back on the surface of the desk. There was a memo pad stacked neatly under her book of stamps. He slid it out. Her handwriting was clear and legible on the list of things to do for the week. It was as close a match as his memory permitted.
His mother had written those to her lover.
Now what? Allie wanted to show those letters to the police. But for what purpose? There was no possible way his mother had killed anyone. All the letters could prove was she had betrayed her husband, her family, with an illicit relationship.
And it wasn’t as if his father hadn’t known.
After years of blocking the memory of that night, it was strange to willingly dredge it up. To try and remember the details. It was the night he’d learned his parents’ love had been a sham, their marriage a joke.
Sam was supposed to have been at a party, but he hadn’t been in the mood, which was completely out of character for him. He had come home and was headed to his room. But at hearing the argument streaming down the hallway, he’d been paralyzed. Unable to continue to his room and shut the door.
Not when he heard his father calling her a whore. It had shocked the hell out of him.
Francisco Fratto had accused her of running around with some pansy-assed dreamer. And Sam’s respectable, soft-spoken mother had responded in kind. Accused him of screwing his assistants and receptionists at his practice over the years, to the point he’d become a joke.
They both threatened to ruin the other. Near the end, Sam had finally found the ability to move his legs and shut himself in his room, blasting Bon Jovi through his headphones to drown out their words.
But he hadn’t been able to block the memory of what he’d heard.
Two months later, his diploma and acceptance letter to UC Berkeley in hand, Sam had left, no reason to hang around.
He also recalled it hadn’t been long after that night that Mr. Williams went missing.
Sam knew about passion. He knew about betrayal.
How ordinary people could snap, their passion blinding them to reason. It was how he made a living.
His mother, though? Elizabeth Fratto couldn’t murder anyone. She couldn’t.
He went to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. While he ground the beans, he thought about his father. Cold, methodical. If he was worried his wife was going to leave him, disgrace the family name, would he have considered ways of getting the other man out of the picture permanently?
But his father was dead. He couldn’t have set the fire or damaged Allie’s car, and Sam didn’t harbor any illusions those were mere coincidences.