Page 29 of Not a Word

“No, let—”

Catherine ended the call, brought up Reece’s number, and tapped the screen.

“Mom,” he said.

“Take me home.”

“Where are you?”

She told him. “But I want you to tell me, right now, how bad it is.”

And so he did. Brent, dead. This other woman, dead. And who was this woman, Catherine wanted to know. Reece gave her the name McCabe had revealed to him.

“Do you know who she is?” Reece asked.

“No,” she lied.

The police believed it was a murder-suicide, her son told her.

Jesus, she thought. She wasn’t even on her feet yet and felt dizzy. This was an unexpected turn of events.

Leah Kennard.

“Mom?”

She managed two words. “Which way?”

“Which way what?”

“You said . . . a murder-suicide. Which way?”

Matter-of-factly, her son said, “Dad shot her. Then he took his own life.”

Catherine went several seconds saying nothing. Then, just before ending the call, she said, “I’ll be out front.”

Twelve

Reece

Mom was ashen-faced when she got into the car. She took her seat, closed the door, put on her seat belt. Didn’t so much as glance at me, just stared straight ahead through the windshield, and said nothing.

I didn’t see the point in asking whether she was okay. I didn’t know whether to pepper her with any other questions, either, although I had plenty. But soon enough she’d be bombarded with them from McCabe.

“Will they still be there?” she asked.

“The detective, I’m sure, because she wants to talk to you. And there are plenty of other police on the scene. Cars on the street, police tape strung up.”

Mom looked pained, no doubt thinking about the shame of it all. She said, “I wasn’t talking about them.”

Oh, I thought. The bodies.

“That depends,” I said. “They’ll have to do whatever it is they do. Take pictures, study the scene. But I think they . . . I think they’ll be taken away pretty soon. I don’t think they’re keeping them there for you to see them. I was able to identify Dad. They might want a more formal identification, later, at, you know, the morgue.” I didn’t want to say the word, but it seemed we were well past the euphemism stage.

Mom barely nodded.

Tentatively, I asked, “Did you know Dad was seeing somebody?” She’d already told me on the phone she didn’t know who Leah Kennard was, but she could still have known, or at least suspected, Dad was seeing another woman.

She pressed her lips together tightly for a moment, still didn’t look my way, and said, “Your father’s personal life was his business, not mine.”