My chin dropped. “You trusted her? She was sleeping with other men for money. How could you trust her? I’ll never trust anything I knew about her.”

“That’s why I hid it from you, Nikki. Because she was an amazing person and a wonderful mother, and the thought of you not trusting her memory kills me,” he said. “It was hard to accept, but eventually I did. Hollis was going to come after me for the fire. I was prepared for it, but he ended up going after her instead. She agreed to go back to Hollywood Dreams, and back to him, to keep him from hurting me. I didn’t know until after all was said and done. I’d been waiting for him. I’d been keeping those letters as some sort of evidence in case something happened to me. And while I was waiting, he was using your mother.”

“But even after you knew about Peyton, you let her go back.”

“I tried to stop her. She told me she didn’t have a choice. She said if she didn’t go back to him, he would do everything he could to ruin us. It was supposed to be temporary. We were going to figure out a way to get her out. I confronted Hollis, and he threatened to have us all killed. Even you. We were trapped by him.”

I pulled my hand out of his grasp and ran it through my hair, which felt tangled and greasy from the ocean wind, the dusty closet, the fear. “God, Dad, and you didn’t think maybe to just call the police? Mom would have gotten a slap on the wrist for her part.”

His eyes were fiery with hatred. “And Bill Hollis would have gotten even less.” He stood, paced to the other side of the room. His back was to me. “The man had so many police officers and politicians in his pocket, he could never be touched for anything. I found that out the hard way after she died.” He spun so he was facing me again. I could see how tired he was. Not just like he’d gotten a bad night’s sleep, but like he’d gotten a bad life’s sleep. “I was the only suspect. Why? Because Hollis knew his wife was behind your mother’s murder, and he told the police to convict me or no one. They didn’t have anything on me. We were going to have a date night that night. I left to buy flowers, and when I came back . . .” He turned up his palms helplessly.

That explained why Dad had never trusted the police. Why he never pursued solving Mom’s murder. Why he didn’t want me to become a cop. The police he’d dealt with were bought and paid for.