Page 94 of Not a Word

Nothing on the other end of the line.

“You there?”

“I’m here.” Like I said, numb.

“Mom couldn’t get pregnant, they went the surrogacy route, and then miracle of miracles, a year later I came along.”

Any other time, Diana would have had some kind of crack about me being a miracle, but my news had put her off her game. She did have a question, though: “And your dad was having an affair with the surrogate, with Leah, all these years?”

“I don’t think so. Mom made it sound like it was the last couple. I feel like my parents had been going through the motions for a long time. Looking back, it started when I was a kid, maybe ten or eleven. Something happened. One day we were a more or less happy family, and the next everyone was walking on eggshells. Hang on, I’m at the funeral home.”

I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and kept the car running while I grabbed the suit off the back seat hanger, ran it in, and handed it to the first person I saw. I was back in the car in under a minute and picked up the phone.

“Still there?”

“Still here. You going to Holden’s now?”

“Yeah.”

“You can’t tell him the stuff about who his real mother is. That’s got to come from your mom, whether she wants to do it or not. It’s not just about finding out who his mother is. It’s finding out who she isn’t.”

Diana had a way of putting things. Before I could respond to that, she said, “Swing by. You need me there when you see Holden.”

I didn’t have to think about that. “Five minutes,” I said.

Holden’s car was in the driveway. As I pulled up in front of the house, I had to admit part of me was hoping he wouldn’t be home. I was all fired up about coming here, and now that I was, I was worried about whether I was going to be laying too much on him.

Diana, sensing my apprehension, said, “We’ll take it slow.”

He must have spotted us through the window, because he was already coming out the front door to greet us. He approached Diana first as she got out the passenger side.

“Hey, sis.” His pet name for Diana since we’d gotten married. He threw his arms around her, catching her off guard at how pleased he seemed to see her.

“Hey,” Diana said.

Holden came around the car and gave me a hug as well. “’Sup?” He had a smile on his face that looked genuine enough.

I glanced across the hood of the BMW at Diana, who gave me a look that seemed to say, Let’s do this.

“Listen,” I said gently, “there’ve been some developments and I wanted to bounce a couple things off you. . . . Going way back, you ever remember Mom and Dad talking about getting a gun?”

The smile evaporated. “What?”

“Okay, I’m just gonna lay it all out here,” I said. “The police say—”

Diana raised a cautious hand. “Holden, Reece found out some troubling things today and you’re entitled to know about them.” She paused, then said, “The gun your father used yesterday . . . was used years ago to shoot someone your dad would have known.”

“The hell are you talking about?” He looked at me. “How come she gets to know stuff first?”

“I told her,” I said, not liking the tone he was taking with my wife. “I was at Mom’s when the detective came by.”

“I’ve never even met this detective,” Holden said, as if that somehow discounted anything she might have told us.

“The thing is,” I said, controlling my voice, “maybe Dad had this gun all these years and we never knew about it. Look, I’m surprised, because I remember Dad hating guns, but how else do you explain what—”

Holden made a sudden, sweeping gesture, first crossing his wrists and then extending this arms, putting a stop to all this. “I don’t want to hear it.”

And then he did something I wasn’t expecting. He put his palms on my shoulders and pushed. Hard. I stumbled back, catching myself just before I might have lost my balance and hit the ground.