He sighed. “I just feel badly that I kind of guilt tripped you when you left. I should’ve never done that. You were just doing your job.”

“It’s all right. You already apologized.”

“I know, but I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking.” He placed his fork back down. “I don’t want you to ever feel guilty for having to do your job. You have a really important job.” He took a deep breath. “I should be supporting you no matter what, not making things difficult for you.”

Tara nodded. She appreciated his support. After all, she certainly needed it, but there was something about what he said that tore at that same wound that had opened up so many times throughout the case. Because in reality, it wasn’t John that made her job difficult at times. She could handle the arguments, she could push those aside and perform. But there was something much deeper, much more painful, that she knew would always trickle its way into her career without her control, unless she took control of it first before it happened again. If she didn’t, she would certainly end up dead or have to leave this career for good.

“What’s on your mind?” John suddenly asked, causing Tara to realize that she had been staring at her plate for a moment too long.

But she still couldn’t find it in her to lift her head. She needed to focus on something as she pieced all her thoughts together. She had always blamed the trauma of her mother’s death as the reason for her nightmares, as the reason for her panic attacks. But deep down she knew there was another layer to it all and it was the reason for her recurring dreams. Each time she saw her father standing over her mother’s body; each time he lifted his head as his eyes moved to the corner of the room before he noticed Tara’s presence. That one dream she had, where he lifted his finger to his lips, where he whispered to the corner of the room—she now knew it wasn’t just a dream. It was a fractured piece of her memory and it was something she had been trying to keep buried for way too long.

Tara finally lifted her head. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

John suddenly stiffened, his eyes filled with questions.

“I think I need to visit my dad,” she said.

John stared at her in confusion. He had known that Tara’s dad had been in prison ever since her mother’s death, and she had made it clear from the very start that she had no desire to visit him, that she had no need to. She never wanted to give him the satisfaction of seeing her.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Tara nodded. “I have to,” she said. “Because I’m not sure he did it.”

A silence lingered between them for a moment as John wrapped his mind around what she was saying.