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Lucy could have bitten off her tongue. Why on earth had she brought that subject up?
“Like cats and dogs. I thought it was normal for a long time. It didn’t help that my dad was always encouraging me to keep dating her. When I finally broke up with her he got mad, and I told him that he should ask her out if he liked her so much. He kept bringing her up every damn time I came home during college until she got married. I don’t know what it was about her, but he kept pushing until he couldn’t anymore.”
Lucy opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. Zack didn’t need her amateur psychology opinion. She wasn’t a doctor, and she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You look like you want to say something. It’s okay if you do.”
“It was stupid. I don’t know anything about the situation. I’ve just read a bunch of books, and that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Still, I’d like to hear your opinion. The fact that you admit that you’re a bystander makes me want to hear it more. An unbiased person might see things that I don’t.”
“Fine,” she replied, placing her napkin on the table. She wanted to tread lightly here. “But I need to tell you a very short story before I give my opinion. It’s about my uncle. He’s my mom’s older brother. He’s an okay guy but he has this thing about everything being his idea, and that idea is the best one ever. No one’s ideas could possibly be as good. Like he’d buy a certain make of car, and he’d try to press my mom and dad into getting the same exact one. He’d go on vacation and the destination was the best and everyone should go. Stuff like that. What it really all came down to was control and validation. He wanted to control what people chose, and he craved validation for his own choices.”
“You think that’s what my dad is doing?”
She did. Wholeheartedly, but she couldn’t be sure. The dynamics of the Winslow family were obviously complex. It might take a lifetime to tease it all out.
“You said that your dad wanted to pick your friends, your college, your sports, your career. It would seem that he wanted to pick your girlfriend, too. I doubt it had anything to do with Angel specifically, it was just that he wanted you to do what he wanted you to. And then when you did, it would validate his choice. Next time you didn’t want to do what he wanted, he could point back to Angel and say, ‘See? I was right. That’s why you should do this, too.’”
“It makes sense,” Zack agreed. “I’ll admit that I stopped worrying about what my dad thought a long time ago. At this point, I don’t really care. That might make me a bad son.”
“I think it just makes you an independent one.”
Zack’s phone lit up and vibrated on the table.
“It’s Finn. I guess he got my message. Do you mind if I take this? I’ll step outside. I won’t be long.”
“Of course, go ahead.”
Zack hurried out of the restaurant, and Lucy stayed at the table still thinking about what he had said about Sarah. Plus Mr. Hayes. Had Sarah been into something dangerous? Lucy hadn’t known the other girl well to be able to say either way. No matter what had happened all those years ago, it was still tragic.
Lucy hadn’t been a wild teenager, but looking back it was probably a miracle that they’d all come through their youth as unscathed as they had. One bad decision and it all could have turned out very different.
Glancing out the front window, she could see Zack talking on the phone, pacing up and down the sidewalk. His expression was dark, his jaw tight and grim. He wasn’t having a pleasant conversation with Finn in the least. The call was clearly escalating, Zack’s face red and angry.
And…shocked? Scared?
Lucy didn’t recognize the emotion, but he was in distress. One thing she’d learned about him was that he was a private person. Later he wouldn’t be happy that he’d given the town anything to gossip about. He was too upset to think about that now, but he would at some point.
It was time to pay the check and get Zack off the public sidewalk, and to somewhere he could have a glass of wine and calm down.
She didn’t know what had happened, but something was not right. At all.
14
Clutching a piece of paper in his right hand, Cooper didn’t bother to knock on the door of his family home, simply pushing it open and striding to his father’s office. He knew good and well where Joel Winslow would be in the after-dinner hours. His father was nothing if not predictable.
I should have seen this one coming a mile away.
The interior of the house had changed since the last time he’d been inside almost six years ago. It looked like Auntie Kim had made an imprint there with all the touches of purple - her favorite color. His mom’s had been yellow.
He didn’t knock on the study door either, flinging it open to see his dad sitting behind the large, dark oak desk. When Cooper had been a kid he’d been a little bit afraid of it. His father hadn’t let any of the children within three feet of it, not wanting it to be scratched or damaged. Lily would roll her eyes and shoo the kids back into the rest of the house.
“Son,” Joel said, his expression neutral. “This is a surprise.”
“Not a pleasant one,” Cooper shot back, tossing the single sheet of paper he’d been carrying on the surface of the desk. “I think it might be time for you to tell the truth. For once in your pathetic life.”
Joel looked at Cooper and then down at the paper before picking it up, perusing the contents. Cooper watched closely for any tell-tale sign of a reaction but the most he got was the tightening of Joel’s jaw.
