How did I come from this man?

“I just don’t understand how you don’t have any remorse,” I say.

“Change the book,” my father repeats. “At the very least, change the boy’s name. That should be easy enough to do.”

Seconds pass, and I’m left feeling unsteadied by alcohol and weak-kneed with anxiety. I don’t want to admit he’s right about this. But he just may be.

“I’ll try,” I say. “The best I can do is try.”

“You will. And if you run into any problems with your publisher, you come tell me.”

“And you’re just going to fix everything?”

“Apparently, it’s what I do best.”

He sets his glass down, leaving it for the housecleaner to deal with. Then my father walks away without saying another word, and as he disappears into the hallway, I’m jealous at not having inherited his dispassionate nature.

How wonderful it must be to feel nothing at all.

Twenty

Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

Colin Pearson lay next to his wife in bed, his breathing still elevated from sex. He reached out and touched Meg’s hand, feeling her warmth spread into him.

Anchor, he thought. It was the word that came to him often when he thought of Meg.

She’s my anchor.

He wasn’t quite sure where he’d drift off to without her, but he knew he’d drift. All the way out to open sea.

Silence passed between them, comfortable and familiar, minutes sliding by in the dark. When she spoke, her voice jolted him from the cusp of sleep.

“I don’t think she did it.”

Colin turned his head to her voice. “Who?”

“The Yates woman. I don’t think she did it.”

He took a deep breath and sank lower into his pillow. “No?”

Colin was leaving in a couple days for his trip to Bury. He’d told Meg the high-level details of the case, and she’d even started reading the most recent J. L. Sharp book.

“I don’t know what her motive would be,” Meg said. “Women kill out of anger or for money. We know they didn’t have money.”

“Maybe she didn’t know the life-insurance policy had lapsed,” Colin said.

“Maybe,” Meg conceded. “But I doubt it. And if it was about anger, there probably would have been evidence of a fight. Was there?”

“Not that was noted by the detective working the case,” he replied. “But that’s why I’m going out there. To ask the questions that weren’t asked. Find out about their relationship. See what she’ll be willing to tell me.”

“If she talks to you at all,” Meg said. “She might just shut the door in your face.”

“What, on this sweet face?”

Meg laughed and Colin felt her turn in the bed, and he did the same. He suddenly felt her lips on his as she moved in toward him and then her palm on his cheek.

“You do have a sweet face,” she said, extending for another kiss. “I just can’t imagine not having you. You would have to screw up really badly to make me want to leave you.”