Too Close to Home

Ellen looked ashen. “Oh God, I didn’t even know.”

“A neighbor heard someone say ‘shame’ after the shot went off. Just like what Derek heard somebody say when he was hiding in the Langleys’ basement. I’ll bet, when they take that slug out of Lance, they’re going to find that the same gun killed him as well.”

“Why?” Ellen said. “What’s the connection?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even know whether I care anymore.”

“One of them,” Ellen said, “is still out there. The one with the dark hair.”

Natalie nodded. “And when the police find him, maybe some of these questions will get answered.”

“What about Derek?” I asked. “When will we see him?”

“They’re bringing him up now,” Natalie said.

And then, as if on cue, he appeared. He was being escorted by a court official, wearing the same clothes he’d been arrested in, and the moment he saw us he ran. Ellen got ahead of me and took him in her arms first, and I ended up hugging both of them together, and everyone was crying, and we held on to one another like that for a very long time.

We offered to take him out for dinner. To Preston’s, the best steak house in Promise Falls. But all Derek wanted was to go home, and it was just as well, since I needed to get into a shower. Turned out that was what he wanted as well, and he stood under it so long that by the time I had mine there was only cold water left.

I didn’t complain. There probably wasn’t enough hot water in the world to wash the prison experience off him.

We ordered two large pizzas to be delivered to the house, and spent the evening together in the kitchen, talking and laughing and crying, and if there had ever been a moment when we felt closer as a family, I could not remember it. We felt reborn, like our lives had been handed back to us. We were whole again.

“It’s going to be different now,” I said to Derek.

“I know,” he said. “I gotta stop messing up.”

“I don’t mean that,” I said. “I mean that we have to be straight with one another.”

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

“If you’re in trouble,” I said, “you have to come to me and your mother. Right away. When it happens. No more secrets.” I glanced at Ellen. “Right?”

Ellen blinked. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right. No more secrets.”

A cop came to the door, told us he’d been asked by Detective Duckworth to take a drive by our house every half hour or so. Mortie’s buddy was still out there someplace, after all, and might decide to come back.

I asked him whether he wanted a slice of pizza.

“Anchovies?” the cop asked.

“No.”

“Okay.”

Back at the table, picking away at pizza crust, I said to my family, “Randy asked me to work for him again.”

“What?” said Ellen. “Randy?”

“Yeah,” I said. I grimaced. “There’s an opening.”

“I thought you hated that guy,” Derek said.

“I’m not exactly the president of his fan club. But we could use the extra money. At least for the short term. Once we pay off the legal bills, then I can tell Randy he has to get somebody else. A month or two, whatever it takes.”

“What about the business?” Derek said. “You going to pack it in? What about my job? I’ll have to find something else for the rest of the summer.”

“Here’s what I was thinking,” I said to him. “You run the business. You know how to do everything. You know the clients-we got a new one, but you don’t have to worry about the Putnam place. They dropped us.”

“Why?” Derek asked.

“Don’t worry about it. But you know the drill.”

“I can’t do it all alone. It’s too much for one person.”

“I know. Drew can help. The two of you can do it.”

“Drew?” Derek said. “The one who killed the guy in the shed?”

We had filled him in on the things that had happened while he’d been away, and how they had led to the charges against him being dismissed.

“Yeah, that Drew,” I said, thinking suddenly that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Derek might have qualms about pairing up with someone who was capable of that, even if the man’s actions had saved his parents’ lives.

But Derek said, “Cool. Sure.”

I called Randy. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “You can have me for a few weeks, till I’ve paid off Natalie. So I’m already putting in my notice. That should give you enough time to find someone else you can live with for the long term.”

“I knew you’d say yes,” he said. “You know why?”

I had to ask. “Why, Randy?”

“Because when you’re with me, you’re always being reminded of how much better a person you are.”

The son of a bitch was generally a stranger to the truth, but he seemed to be onto something there.

Derek spoke briefly on the phone with Penny, but her parents cut the call short. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and concluded they didn’t still believe our son was guilty of murder. They just didn’t want their daughter hanging out with a boy who’d figured out how to secure a makeout pad for a week.