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I should just leave. Leave him here to find these nonexistent gems. My feet twitched with the urge to turn around and walk away, leave Richard behind like he’d done to me.
If I could leave the best of my family behind, why the hell couldn’t I walk away from the worst of them?
“I need you, son,” Richard said, his voice getting earnest, his eyes slightly damp. The old caring father routine—I may have been absent, but you were never absent from my thoughts. I fell for that story hook, line and sinker more times than I liked to admit.
“You need me to help you look for gems,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “You could hire someone for that. Hell, we could get a cleaning crew in here and they’d—”
There was something off on Dad’s face, something raw. Something not manufactured and it looked like worry.
“What?” I asked, feeling my stomach fall into my shoes.
“It’s not a big deal—”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I was in a…thing…back in Los Angeles.”
“Oh, my God,” I breathed, turning away from my father, fisting my hands in my hair. “Oh. My. God.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Richard said. I heard him step forward and put up my hand. If the old man got closer there was a good chance I would knock him out. “I swear to you, son, I didn’t do anything. But the friend I was staying with was arrested for credit-card fraud. I didn’t know what he was doing, but because—”
“But because you were staying with him, the police think you do.” I sighed and looked my father hard in the eye.
“I was questioned and released. I swear, son,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. Credit-card fraud is for lowlifes.”
My laughter was a hard bark. “Good to know you have standards.”
“I just need a change of scene, until things cool down. Just for a little while.”
“What if I decide to leave?”
“Then I’d wish you well,” he said, “but I better stay. Empty house and all.”
Empty house full of gems.
“It’s not your house.”
“Not yours, either.”
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
There was no way I could leave now. It would be like walking away from a bomb with a lit fuse. There was simply no telling what kind of trouble Richard would get into unattended. And if I wasn’t here, Juliette would drive by, checking on The Manor. It was only a matter of time before she found Richard.
“I need a drink,” I muttered.
“What we need is a plan,” Richard said an hour later, pouring another finger of whiskey in the old crystal tumblers. I picked mine up, loving the paper-thin edge of the glass against my lips and the solid heft and weight in my hands. Made me want to bite it and hurl it against a wall.
Sort of how I felt about my father.
About Juliette. Lord, how was I going to be able to avoid her now? In a town this size? Impossible.
“What we need is to stop drinking, start looking,” I said, drinking anyway.
“I’ve been looking,” Richard said, stretching back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles.
We sat on the back porch, the early afternoon sunlight a bright warm blanket across our legs, the whiskey a warm blanket in my stomach. Thoughts of Juliette like a sore tooth I just could not leave alone.
More whiskey would fix that, I thought, taking a half inch from the glass. Which was why I was drinking instead of looking, because first things, after all, were first.
Gotta get Juliette out of my head.
“Yeah? Where have you been looking?”
“I started in the basement,” Richard said, looking out over the maze and the greenhouse. “Boxes of paperwork. I tell you—” he smiled, shaking his head “—that little girl of mine is a packrat—”
I stiffened. Don’t call her that, I wanted to yell. You don’t get to call her that.
But I bit back the words.
“Margot still raising orchids?” I asked, unable to look directly at my father without the help of much more booze.
“I wouldn’t know, son. Margot and I never discussed hobbies.”
I stood and stepped onto the lush green grass, a miracle in the end-of-summer heat, and crossed the yard, my fingers brushing the silvery green leaves of the trees. Soft. But not soft like Juliette.
“Hey, why the sudden interest in finding the gems, Ty?” Dad followed me across the grass. He stumbled a little, but righted himself with grace. Dad never could hold his liquor, but he was about the most gracious drunk I had ever seen. Whiskey turned the old man into royalty. “This morning you could care less.”
“We’ve got nothing else to do,” I said.
“You don’t believe me about the gems, do you?”
“I don’t believe one way or the other.” At this point I was babysitter/bomb squad, and if the baby wanted to look for gems—what did it hurt?
