“Ready?” she said, and when he nodded, she turned the recorder on again.
Reg started talking right away. “His face was red—a true red, like a tomato. He wouldn’t stop. There were people screaming and crying but he didn’t seem to hear. He just kept shooting. And that girl. That awful April. She just stood there...”
“Mr. Sharkey.”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you bring Kimmy?”
He put the glass down.
“I mean... had you ever brought her to meet Linda before?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, then why—”
“It was Father’s Day. I was only going to talk to Linda. Tell her it wasn’t a good day for me.”
“I still don’t understand.”
He exhaled hard. “She made me,” he said. “Clara made me. She said, ‘Look, if you’re just getting some gas, why not take Kimmy? You know she loves that mural.’ She didn’t say it like a suggestion, though. She may as well have said, ‘Take Kimmy, or else.’”
“So you did what she said.”
“We were having a lot of trouble at home. I think she might have figured it out about me and Linda, I don’t know. But yeah. Yeah, I did what she said. To... keep the peace.”
Summer took another swallow of water, lukewarm and metallic, and carefully set the glass down, the truth sinking in. This was why Clara Sharkey had killed herself—not because she couldn’t live without Kimmy. Because her jealousy and anger had led to Kimmy’s death. So much guilt in one family. So many secrets that Quentin had never known. “What about your other daughter?” Summer said. “How did she react to her sister’s death?”
He looked at Summer, a hard smile crossing his face. “My other daughter didn’t react at all,” he said, “because you see, she wasn’t around.”
“What?”
“Katie had run away from home. She’d been gone for two weeks. We’d been worried sick about her at first, but then we’d gotten one phone call. She said to quit looking for her. Leave her alone, Katie said. She sounded high.”
“She ran away?” Summer said. “She didn’t tell you why?”
“She had problems. Christ, she never stopped having problems,” he said, and Summer heard it again, just a hint of what she’d heard during his interview with Quentin, that frustration and rage. Reg had made so many stupid mistakes in his life, though. He’d lost so many people and still he kept on living. Who wouldn’t be angry?
“You know, when we’d gone to church that Sunday, Clara and I both prayed we’d have our family together again. For Father’s Day. God has quite a sense of humor.”
Summer took another sip of water. “When did Katie come home?”
“A few days after Clara died. I couldn’t even look at her. Didn’t ask her where she’d been. The whole rest of her life, I always found it so hard to look her in the eye without my stomach knotting up. I know that sounds terrible.”
“You were hurting,” she said. “Looking for someone to blame.”
Reg took a sip of his water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Summer’s gaze drifted to the kitchen counter behind him. The dusty, empty pasta cylinders, the avocado-green phone with its twisted, old-fashioned cord. And next to it, a pair of sunglasses. Vintage tortoiseshell Ray-Bans.That’s where you left them, Quentin.At your grandfather’s house.She shut her eyes for a few seconds.God has quite a sense of humor.
“It’s the one thing I’ll never understand,” Reg said. “Gabriel hadgone to that gas station with the purpose of killing me, and from where he was standing, he easily could have done it. But he didn’t. He didn’t aim the gun at me. He aimed it at everyone else.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I think he knew that letting me live would be worse punishment.”
A tear leaked down his cheek. Summer found herself leaning across the table, taking both his hands in hers. She found herself feeling for him, this scared, stupid, selfish man. What a strange turn this interview had taken—almost as though Quentin had engineered it himself. Closure for someone, anyway, if not for him.
Reg said, “Was he close to his mother?”
