Page 68 of Not a Word

“You want it, go get it,” she said, struggling to her feet.

Brent stood there, mouth agape, looking down in shock at Evelyn’s lifeless form.

Catherine happened to glance back at the house and noticed, in the second-floor window of Holden’s bedroom, the dark silhouette of a child, watching.

Twenty-Four

Reece

There are bombshells, and then there are bombshells.

Holden was, at least genetically speaking, my half brother.

“You can’t keep this from him,” I said to my mother, standing in her house. “He deserves to know.”

“Not knowing hasn’t been a problem for him up to now, so I don’t see any reason to change things.”

I felt myself coming to a boil. Keeping this from Holden was not only a betrayal to him, but me as well. I’d believed Holden was a full brother, and not that it would make any difference in how I felt about him, but didn’t I deserve to know the truth? If I were Holden, wouldn’t I be entitled to know how I’d come into the world?

“God, what a piece of work you are,” I said.

Mom slapped me across the face. “How dare you.”

My cheek was hot, but the slap wasn’t enough to quell my anger.

“No, how dare you,” I said. “Keeping secret who we are. What we are to each other. You’d no right to do that.”

“Don’t talk to me about rights,” she snapped.

“Look how it’s paid off for you, having our family live a lie all these years. That detective will figure it all out, and she’ll want to know why you weren’t more forthcoming with her. Once she knows what Leah did for you and Dad and talks to Holden—”

“There’s no reason for her to talk to Holden!”

“There will be. Once she puts it together.”

“She won’t,” Mom protested. “She didn’t strike me as all that bright.”

That made me laugh. Mom wishing other people were stupid wouldn’t make it so.

“I have to find your father a suit,” she said, turning and heading for the stairs, clearly eager to put an end to our conversation.

I’d almost forgotten that was why we were here. To get some clothes to take back to the funeral home. I was taken aback by how briskly Mom headed upstairs. She’d evidently gotten over her reluctance to not only be in this house, but go into rooms one might think she’d never want to enter again.

She walked right past the king-size bed without looking at it, which was just as well. Dad and Leah were long gone, of course, but the room was still a crime scene. The bed, the linens, it would all have to go. The bloodied carpet ripped up. The walls scoured and repainted or wallpapered. The framed painting above the bed, with traces of brain matter on it, disposed of.

Mom walked past it all so blithely that for a moment I thought it might be because she’d already seen it. I put the idea out of my head as quickly as it had come to me.

“This should do,” she said, coming out of the walk-in closet, in one hand a hanger bearing a dark blue suit, and in the other, a folded white shirt and blue-striped tie. With both hands full, she managed to open a dresser drawer, pull out a pair of socks, then head for the door, conducting the entire exercise in less time than I could get a Big Mac and fries at the McDonald’s drive-through window.

I went into the closet, saw a pair of dress shoes, grabbed them, and met her in the hall. She looked at what I’d brought her and frowned. “Not brown,” she said.

I went back for a black pair and by the time I returned she was down in the front hall, ready to hand me the clothes.

“You can take these over,” she said.

“You’re not coming?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m . . . going to stay here. I’ll move my things into the guest room. Would you help me with that?”