“Then Todd came out on the porch and told me to go inside. He and Arlo spoke briefly, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Arlo handed a card over and left, but Todd was furious when he came inside, waving Arlo’s work card around. Todd accused me of calling the police somehow and dragged me down to the basement. Just until the cop stops sniffing around. That’s what he said. Lucky for me, Arlo’s spidey senses were pinging like crazy.”

“Yeah. He’s a suspicious sonofabitch.”

Della laughed. It felt good to laugh in the midst of all this horribly heavy history. “He came back twice in two days, and on the third day, he kicked the door in, cuffed both of them, and found me in the basement. I’d never been so pleased to see anybody in my life.”

Her wrist had been in a state, and, to this day, Della still remembered the sting of her raw flesh. Lifting her arm, Della found the ligature mark that circled her right wrist. It was faint now, but three years down the track, it was still there. Tucker slid his hand over hers, bringing it to his mouth and pressing a kiss against the delicate blue veins on the underside. Then he tucked it against his chest, his thumb gently caressing where he’d just kissed.

“How did it feel? To be free like that?”

“It was…” Even now, Della struggled with words adequate enough to convey her feelings about that night. “Stunning. Within half an hour, there were blue lights and cops everywhere. Four years of hell, and suddenly it was…over. Thanks to Arlo.”

“He was like a man possessed after his father’s deathbed confession of your existence. He’d made Arlo promise he’d find you, even though all he had was a name and the town where he met your mother. It took him about five months, but he finally tracked you down. He was pissed at his old man, though, for stepping out on his mom and for not having checked on you sooner. But his father had said that your mom had been adamant about no contact, that she wanted nothing from him other than the child she couldn’t have with her husband and that she was happy. She’d begged him to leave things be, and he’d reluctantly agreed.”

Della knew this part of the story already because Arlo had recounted it in those days after he’d swooped in and changed her life. But she knew deep in her bones it hadn’t been love for her husband that had made her mom desperate for secrecy but fear of what he’d do if he discovered he wasn’t the biological father.