Chapter Twenty-Two
“Who was my dad sleeping with?” Jo stared Miss Gina down and jumped right to the point.
“Are we having this conversation without alcohol?”
Jo pointed to the badge on her chest. “I am.”
“I have guests. Let’s take this out back.” Out back referred to Miss Gina’s porch, which covered the span of the house overlooking the backyard and guesthouse that Gina herself used.
Her skin prickled, like it did when a knock came to your door at two a.m.
Instead of sitting, Jo leaned against the banister and took several deep breaths as Miss Gina made herself comfortable on a cushioned Adirondack chair.
“Let me start by saying I don’t know who she was, just that there was someone.”
Disappointment hit.
“What do you know?”
“You were in middle school. That preteen walking mess made worse by a lack of a woman in your life. I remember the first time Zoe convinced you to stop here. Something had upset you enough to make your friends want to take care of you. I soon learned that wasn’t the normal pattern.”
Jo wasn’t sure about that. Seemed Mel and Zoe were watching out for her those last years in school.
“How does this timeline play into my father’s lover?”
“I paid attention at that point. For all I know it was going on before then, but after, I was certain.”
“I’m listening.” Jo tried to remember that time in her life. Her mother had been gone long enough that she’d strained to remember the sound of her voice, the smell of her perfume. Puberty had hit and her father understood nothing. Looking back, he’d done his best, but he had been rather clueless.
“When you, Mel, and Zoe started to come around, Joseph started stopping by with some regularity.”
“You said he did that after I moved away.”
“He did. There was a time when he’d already deemed me safe and didn’t bother hovering over you here. I agreed to call him if I thought you were in trouble.”
“So my father watched me through you.”
“A little.”
When Jo was a teenager, she would have felt betrayed. As an adult, not so much.
“I’d always known your father. We’d have a conversation or two over the years, but as a respected citizen of River Bend, one that didn’t need to be escorted out of R&B’s, we didn’t cross professional paths. Outside of when your mother passed and I invited guests at her funeral to stay overnight.”
“But you managed to get to know him after.”
“I did. He never came right out and told me there was someone, but when I hinted that he was a little more relaxed than normal, he’d give me that grin that said both . . . yes, and what are you talking about?”
Jo knew that look well.
“How is it possible you never figured out who she was?”
“It wasn’t my business. I didn’t pry, didn’t look around with a magnifying glass.”
“Why would he keep it secret?”
“Maybe it wasn’t serious.”
“How long did this go on?”
Miss Gina narrowed her eyes as if searching her memory for a clue. “Your dad was really uptight when you were in high school.”
“Frustrated,” Jo said.
“Probably.”
Frustrated meant he wasn’t getting it. She knew that feeling well. Or he could have been fed up with her behavior and sex had nothing to do with it. “Do you think he took a woman up to the cabin?”
“Could have. It wasn’t like anyone drove up there to check.”
There hadn’t been so much as a tube of lubricant up at the cabin to indicate a sexual rendezvous.
Jo turned around to look at the line of trees surrounding the property. She hadn’t needed a cabin when hooking up as a young adult. Her father may have had higher standards, or maybe not. It wasn’t like she could ask him now.
“You think this lover was connected to his death, don’t you?”
“I think his lover is the only new thing I have to go on to figure out what really happened. My father’s death wasn’t an accident.”
Jo half expected Miss Gina to deny her allegation.
“I agree.”
“I’m not sure they are connected, but if my father could keep something as transparent as a girlfriend, lover . . . or whatever she was a secret, what else had he been hiding?”
“Well, if there is anyone who can figure that out, it’s the woman who stepped into his shoes. You live in his house, have his friends, his colleagues, his office . . . hell, you’re sleeping in his room. You live his life.”
“Until lately,” Jo mumbled. Gill’s presence and the desire to get out of River Bend and find something to occupy her world outside of potholes and barking dogs was a complete departure from life as she knew it.
“What about the year he died?” Jo turned to watch Miss Gina’s face.
“I think he was itchy. We’d sit right here on this porch, drink my lemonade, and he’d get that look in his eyes.”
“What look?”
Miss Gina pointed a finger at Jo. “That one. The one that said he wasn’t happy and wanted a change.”
“So why didn’t he leave? My mom was gone, I was gone.”
“That’s the ten thousand dollar question.”
Twenty minutes later, Jo stood over her father’s grave. The image of him that had always come up when she closed her eyes started to become less of a memory and more of a snapshot. Like a photograph without animation. An image without scent or feelings. A stone protruding from the ground in place of a life.
Her throat clogged. “What were you hiding, Dad?”
The answer was there. Jo knew when she found it everything would fall into place.
She bent down, pulled a dandelion, and ran her fingertips over his name. In contrast, she turned to the site of her mother’s resting place with less attachment. She hated that. Would have loved to have known her mother better before the car accident that took her life. Her entire family sat in one place. Two dead, one alive. Her maternal grandparents sent cards at Christmas, the occasional birthday sentiment. Her paternal grandfather had passed before her father, his mother had died shortly after. Burying her son wasn’t something Nana Ward had taken well. She’d had a stroke shortly after, and then fell and broke a hip. It was over after that. That left Jo. There were cousins, but none that had kept a close relationship and none that lived anywhere close to River Bend.
Her friends were her family.
Jo straightened and closed her eyes.
The phone in her pocket buzzed, breaking her concentration. Gill’s name flashed on her screen.
“Hey,” she answered.
“Is this a bad time?”
“No. It’s fine.” She turned away from her parents’ graves.
“What’s wrong?”
She smiled, attempted to pull the cloud that had blown over her out of her voice. “Nothing.”
“You don’t sound like it’s nothing.”
“Just one of those days. I’m fine.” It was nice that he cared enough to ask. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing pleasant.”
Jo glanced around the cemetery. “That makes two of us. Guess what I found out.”
“That my name is Gaston and I’m really a French spy.”
Some of her cloud lifted. “Can you even fake a French accent?”
“Wee, wee.”
It sounded like a kid telling her he needed a potty. It felt good to laugh.
Jo turned and took a final look at her father’s grave. “My dad was having an affair . . . or had one prior to his death.”
Gill paused. “You didn’t know that until today?”
“You did?”
“I assumed. Did Miss Gina tell you who she was?”
Jo shook her head. “Wait, how did you know Miss Gina knew anything?”
“She tested me up at the cabin. Told me if I was worth my weight I’d figure out one of your father’s secrets.”
Jo noticed another weed, reached down to pull it. “She told you before saying a word to me.”
“She didn’t tell me anything. Not really. Do you have any idea who the woman was?”
“Not a clue.”
“Was there a face or name that came to you when you realized there was someone in his life?” Gill asked.
“No. No one. It’s disturbing.”
“Disturbing because he had a lover or because you can’t think of who it was?”
“I could only hope my dad found something after my mother. He wasn’t an old man. I should have realized there had to be someone in all those years before now.”
“You’re his daughter. It’s hard to think of our parents being sexual people.”
She hadn’t really thought about the whole thing on a physical level. The thought made her cringe.
“He never left town. We’d go up to the cabin when I was young. Once in a while we’d visit my grandparents, but that was so seldom I don’t remember the color of their house. His whole life was this town.”
“Not his whole life, hon. There was someone at some point. And from what I can determine from your father’s profile, the man was Mr. Commitment.”
“He was that.”
“So if he was a serial monogamist, then he had few lovers, and those he did have he felt some kind of connection with.”
“Who? I can’t figure out who.”
“Evidence is somewhere.”
“I’ve searched the house for anything to clue me in on his life. I’ve never found a photograph, a letter . . . anything.”
“Maybe it’s not in the house. Or it’s so hidden you’ve yet to find it.”
She tossed the weeds onto the grass. “It’s frustrating.”
“Most investigations are.”
“This is personal.”
“I know,” Gill said. “Makes it even harder to see the truth.”
Her head was too full, full of information, full of what she didn’t know. She shook it all off. “I’m looking forward to this weekend.” She was driving into Eugene a few hours before the track team for the meet taking place in Gill’s city.
“I’m starting to think you like me,” he teased.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said with a smile.
She heard him chuckle. “Will I jeopardize your reputation if I show up at the track meet to watch?”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
There was a pause. “If you don’t want me there—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you do want me there.”
Jo rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Since when do you sound insecure?”
“Just trying to get my girl to ask me to come.”
His girl?
“Manipulation.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said, quoting her.
“I would.” Jo looked up from the grass she was studying during their conversation and scanned the empty cemetery. Her eyes landed back on her father’s name. “You’re not a secret in my life. If you want to watch a bunch of kids run, jump, and throw heavy objects, knock yourself out.”
“I’ll see you at noon.”
Jo’s skin started to itch. She turned a full circle, scanned the edges of the cemetery. “Noon.”
“Are you okay?”
She pulled the phone away from her ear briefly, thinking she heard something that sounded out of place.
“Jo?”
The dead were silent, the birds scattered from tree to tree, and bees buzzed in a tree a few yards away. She shook off the cold that had washed over her.
“I’m here.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Just distracted.”
“You sure?”
Another glance to her left, then to her right. “I’m sure.”
“I’ll see you this weekend.”
Jo disconnected the call, did another full circle scan before walking to her car. Once inside with the engine running, some of the cold dissipated, but the hair on her arms continued to stand on end.