Cat Trick

Maggie touched his arm and smiled. “Liam, loyalty is one of your very best qualities,” she said. “But you need to stop talking right now, because you aren’t helping.”

“You found out the truth about how Mike’s brother, Gavin, died, didn’t you?” I asked Wren. “You found out that Mike was partially responsible for the death of the man you thought of as your stepfather.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny muscle in Liam’s cheek begin to twitch.

Elizabeth was still standing. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Why would she say what a great guy he was if she thought he had something to do with that?”

“Because you didn’t want anyone to know how much you hated him, did you?” I said gently.

Wren gave her head a tiny shake, the movement almost imperceptible. “No, I didn’t.”

Elizabeth stiffened and swallowed a couple of times before she could speak. “Why?” The one word came out in a whisper.

Wren turned from me to look at her friend. “Because I didn’t want anyone to know I killed him,” she said.

Liam ducked his head and stared at the floor. Maggie pressed her lips together. Harry moved around the table and put his arm around his sister’s shoulders. She stood there rigidly, but she didn’t shrug him off.

“Except you didn’t,” I said.

“Yes, I did,” Wren repeated, pushing back the strand of hair that had fallen in her face again.

I leaned forward and laid my hand on her arm. “I know you think you did. But you didn’t. You didn’t. Tell me what happened.”

“I read my mother’s journals,” she said. “The first week I got here after classes ended. They were in this old leather trunk. It was out in a storage unit she had. I just picked out random ones and started reading. One of them was from the time when Gavin died.

“Some people were saying that Mike had bought beer that night and that he’d kept telling Gavin that my mother had him whipped.” She swiped at a tear that had started to slide down her face. “My mother . . . confronted Mike, the morning of the . . . the funeral. She found out the stories were true. That was . . . that was why she never had anything to do with any of that family again.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I decided I was going to drive to Chicago and confront him. I didn’t even get out of town before my crappy car broke down. It took a while before I had the money to get it fixed.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Elizabeth was listening, although she was looking down at the floor.

“Then I found out he was here, in Mayville Heights,” Wren continued. “I couldn’t believe it, but I saw him crossing the street and it just seemed like a sign, you know?”

I nodded. “Why did you wait a day and a half to go see him?”

She folded one arm across her middle as though she were hugging herself. “I didn’t,” she said. “Not exactly. I went to the St. James—that’s where he was staying—the first night Mike got here. I don’t know what I planned to do. I was just so angry. I watched him in the bar and I realized that hurting him wasn’t going to make anything different. So I just left.”

“But you couldn’t let the chance to talk to him go by,” I said.

Wren nodded. “I thought about it all the next day. I couldn’t let him just go without telling him what he did to me, to my family, either. I waited for everyone to leave Wednesday night and then I confronted him.”

Her face tightened in anger. “He didn’t recognize me, and when I told him who I was and why I was there, he tried to . . . to make excuses.” She was breathing hard. “I was so . . . so angry.”

The hand still resting in her lap was squeezed so tightly into a fist, I thought the skin pulled white over her knuckles would split open. “There was . . . a metal table just inside the tent. I think he was using it for a desk, and I kicked it or maybe I shoved it. I don’t know. He had this leather briefcase on top, and when I hit the table it fell off. When Mike went to grab it, the table knocked him off balance.”

She stopped to swallow and get her breath. “He went backward and he hit his head—on the ground, I think. I . . . I . . . waited for him to move . . . to get up, but he didn’t and . . . and I just ran.” She brushed another tear away. “I killed him. It was an accident, but I killed him just the same. I panicked. I used a rock to put a nail in my tire so it would go flat. I drove up onto the highway because I knew there was a good chance Liam would drive by and see me.”