Marilyn McCafferty sits at the head of the table, bitter, yet drunk with revenge. I’m not sure what I’ve ever done to this battleax, but I can tell by that gleam in her beady little eyes that she’s about to knife my balls off so fast I will never see it coming. For a moment I envision her hunched over a pentagram, the leader of a black mass—worshiping trees in her birthday suit, her arms flailing to the sky as she decries her hatred for men.

“I need some water.” Allison springs to her feet. “Can I get anything for the two of you?”

Both McCafferty and I offer a silent refusal.

I wait until Ally is deep in the kitchen before leaning in. “I’m working on my marriage.”

Allison comes back with a water bottle in hand before I can finish my thought. But McCafferty doesn’t look amused by my efforts. Instead, it looks as if I’ve only managed to piss her off that much more.

Allison gives me a quick wink. “So let’s see what cobwebs lurk in the attic of your past, shall we?”

She’s awfully glib. I can’t believe she didn’t mention the fact some chick from high school has been hanging around. You would think she would mention something like that. I’ll have to pick her brain later. See if this girl is off her rocker. See if her kid can pass for Ota. Leave no stone unturned. I frown at McCafferty because a part of me is afraid she’s about to land a boulder on my chest.

“Are you certain that Reagan is your biological daughter?”

Allison jerks, kicking me from under the table without meaning to. “What?” She slaps her hand down over the stack of pictures patiently waiting for their moment in the spotlight. “Listen, I’m about to ask you to leave our home.” Her face is red with rage. “This is insulting and completely unnecessary.”

“Yes,” I assure them both. “Reagan is one hundred percent my child.” Allison settles down a bit, just enough to take a deep breath. “Look, this is the kind of speculation we don’t need right now. All those morons camping out on my lawn, chanting bullshit until the wee hours of the night, would love to feast off something like this. Reagan is mine. End of debate. You can take all the DNA samples you want once you bring my baby girl back alive.”

Allison gives a frenetic nod of agreement, her eyes set wide as an open sky.

McCafferty places her fingers onto the next photo in her surprise lineup of horrors. “The only reason I ask is because we located a few of your fraternity brothers. One of them mentioned a lengthy breakup ensued just before the two of you announced you would be parents.”

“That’s true.” Allison takes in a quivering breath. “Suffice it to say we were ecstatic to get back together. I’m fertile.”

That’s not entirely true. Ally and I have had a few slipups. Not once did she get pregnant. And then there were the intentional slipups on my part, and again it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t meant to be. Yet. Once Reagan comes home, I want to get to the serious business of expanding our family. I want more daughters, and yes, I would like to have a son. I think that would be wonderful. I want the whole package with Allison. For as many mistakes as I’ve made, I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to her.

“Do either of you know who this man is?”

Allison gasps before McCafferty turns the picture over, but once I see my brother’s smiling face it’s me gasping.

“Aston.” I crane my neck a bit. “It was accidental—his death.”

“I know.” McCafferty flips the next one over, and we find Wilson smiling back at me. “Your other brother.”

“Yes, Wilson. He was a good guy. He OD’d on opiates or something. I was just a kid. I’ve never plied my parents for the details.” The fact he died was all I needed to know at the time. It’s still too much for me to take in.

“He didn’t die of opiates.” She cleans her eye teeth with her tongue. I steal a moment to glance at the door. For once I’m glad my father is taking his scheduled walk of the day. If he couldn’t handle it in the privacy of his own home, he certainly couldn’t tolerate the casket tossing going on in my dining room. “There was another chemical found in his bloodstream.”

“What was that?” Who knew what shit he was on. Toward the end, half the time he didn’t know what state he was in.

“Ethylene glycol. A chemical found in antifreeze. It’s hard to detect.”

“Antifreeze.” I shake my head at Allison. “Sounds like he got ahold of some bad stuff.”

“Sounds like it,” Allison is quick to agree with me, but too quick, and it unnerves me. The last thing I want is for McCafferty to think we’re covering for one another.

She flips the next picture over, exposing a younger, far less affable version of my father—not that any version of him is affable. But this particular one screams asshole even to the kindest, soft-footed woman. There’s not a person on the planet who wouldn’t want to give him the finger in his younger years. He was tough and he had to be.

“That’s my father. Looking good, right?” I glance to Ally and we share a quick smile. When Allison first met Pops, she said if she were older my mother would have to watch out. It was in jest, and something I appreciated at the time since I’ve gone through life wearing his face.

“Handsome devil.” McCafferty gives the photo a slight wink and both Ally and I share a smirk. “Rumor has it, he was a hard man.”

“Still is,” I offer. “He’s been—”

“Staying with you.” She sniffs at the idea. “Yes, I do know that. How do you feel about your father, James? Would you say you have a good relationship with him?”

“Excellent. Better than ever.”

“And your mother?”

“She passed about a year and a half ago.” Something deep in my chest unhinges and I resist the urge to bawl. “She was the best. I miss her like crazy.”

“Sounds like she meant the world to you.”

“Doesn’t every mother?”

“Not every mother.” She shoots a quick look to Ally. “How did your father feel about his children?”

“He was tough. He needed his kids to be perfect. He ran the courthouse. How would it look if his kids were running around wild? Small town.” Wilson was running around wild.

The past comes flooding back and I bite down over my lip so hard I taste blood.

McCafferty flips the next picture. Rachel standing in front of a batch of brownies. Home ec yearbook picture. I recognize it because the editor of the yearbook gave us a blowup print to display at the funeral. She looks happy. Whole.

“Is that your sister?” Allison pulls it over and admires her with a saturated smile. I would like to think that Allison and Rachel would have been very good friends. It’s a recurring fantasy I have—all my siblings alive, the entire lot of us enjoying long and joyful Sunday dinners. We could have been something great. Great indeed.

“And this one.” McCafferty flips another one over, the remaining pile growing markedly thin.

“That’s Mom.” God, I miss her. I give a wistful twist of the neck. There she is in all her redheaded Irish glory. “Rich in a dress.” Both Allison and McCafferty share a quiet chuckle.

“She was killed tragically.” McCafferty is fishing. But for what?

“It’s no secret how my mother died. Bad transmission meets railroad tracks. It was unfortunate.” That letter I found comes back to me and my stomach grinds.

“Yes.” She picks up my mother’s picture and hands it to Allison. “It’s unfortunate your father had the car impounded. Had it crushed down to a tin can that very afternoon.” She pumps her brows.

A self-righteous anger percolates through me on behalf of my father. He may not have been perfect, but he was damn near close. “What in the hell are you suggesting?”

McCafferty’s lips twitch as if she were getting off on my annoyance. “I’m suggesting we move on.”

She flips the next and final picture over.

Monica and I locked in an embrace outside of the house I grew up in.

“That’s from the other night.” I nod to Ally because for some reason she knew about it, too. “How did you get this?”

McCafferty pulls the pictures forward and straightens them as if she’s getting ready to shuffle a deck. “Someone sent it to me.” Her gaze skirts the two of us. “My number is included on all of the missing posters and on the website Rich created. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’m hearing these days.” A smile warbles on her lips. That smirk coupled with that statement makes her look like some old deranged grandmother that belongs locked up and forgotten in a home somewhere.

Allison growls at the idea. “Anytime you want to pull fact from fiction, I’m available to you.”

“I might take you up on that offer. In the meantime, neither of you looks too concerned about this woman.”

“Monica,” I offer. “My ex. We dated in high school.”

“Monica Percale.” McCafferty taps her finger over the picture. “Twice married, twice divorced.”

A curious huff expels from me. “Did not know that.” Do not care.

“Hospital records show a birth in Clark county nine years ago.”

I swallow the baby-sized lump down my throat. Convenient. Just around the time we split up.

“Rumor has it, she went wild after our breakup.” Rumor has it, I just made up a rumor. Monica told me point-blank we had a kid. She also mentioned she lost it. Crib death two months old, a baby girl named after me, sort of, Jamie.

“She said the baby died. Tragedy upon tragedy.” McCafferty shoves her salacious stash back into the envelope from which it escaped. Pandora’s box. That’s what Hailey’s bikini top amounted to, Pandora’s box. If I could rewind time, I’d shove myself into the pool and hold myself under. Take that bikini top I stripped off and hang myself with it. Reagan would still be here. Reagan would be safe. Far away from the monsters that have captured her. Monster. That word circles my brain in a loop.

We walk McCafferty out and Allison spins into me, disgruntled and pissed.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a kid?” Her eyes bulge like two lime green discs.

“Is this where I’m supposed to say you’re really good at math?”

She swats me. “You’re not funny.”

“And I’m probably not the father. Look, once I cut her loose—she cut loose. It could have been anyone she met, the bartender, the box boy at the grocery store. She was moving fast, and she wasn’t keeping it a secret. She was trying to hurt me, only I didn’t care.” I wrap my arms around her. “Because I already had you.”

She bats those long lashes at me a million miles an hour. “Do you really think the kid is dead?”

“Yes.” I inch back, trying to get a better look at her. “You heard McCafferty. She said it herself.”

“No. She suggested Monica said it. I don’t believe a word that comes out of that lying cunt’s mouth.”

My body jerks just hearing the vulgarity. Allison isn’t one to toss around an errant expletive unless she means it—especially not that one. And I’d venture to guess she means it in the most vulgar sense.

“I promise you. She’s telling the truth. Why would she lie about something like that? It’s insanity.” But then, everything about Monica is insanity. Why not this?

Allison lands a finger over my lips as if to hush me. She hooks those steely green eyes into mine and makes me stay there. “People like to kiss you, James. Don’t they?” A moment bounces by as if she wants me to admit it. She gives my cheek a light tap. “It happens.” She heads for the stairs and my stomach drops to the floor, it cannonballs right through middle earth. She knows. She has to know. “I promised my sister I’d give her an update.”

“Great. Tell her I said hello.” I want to say tell her I like the location of my dick but don’t. It’s common knowledge that Jane runs some street gang from the inside. With all those crooked connections, maybe she’s the only one who can help find my daughter. Come on, Jane, you psychotic bitch—bring my baby back.

God knows someone has to.

---

Later that night I take the letter my mother wrote, a six-pack of beer my father generously sprung for, and head for the backyard. Allison is wrapped up like a burrito watching television in bed—the news—the story of us. That catatonic stare lets me know she’s not capable of taking any of it in. She shouldn’t. It’s all speculation and bullshit. Soon they’ll have one of my dead brothers as the leading suspect. It’s twisted and ridiculous, but it must sell airtime or they wouldn’t have it wallpapering our nation day and night.

Dad is out a little later than usual tonight and I appreciate it. I like the solitude for once. Not that I wouldn’t trade that for Reagan. But my father’s presence has been a touch cloying. I’m shocked Allison hasn’t kicked him to the curb yet. Maybe I’ll ask him to leave. She’s probably thinking it.

The iced cement greets me as I take a seat on the first step. The sun went down an hour ago, but the sky is still striated orange and black—tiger sky.

Carefully I extract my mother’s letter from the envelope, pressing the paper to my cheek as if it were her fingers, her skin. The letter is dated April 14^th just six weeks before she took that fated drive.

Jolene—just looking at her handwriting feels like a nice warm hug—I’m sorry I had to cut the conversation short the other night. He’s watching my every move, listening. I just want you to know that I’ve made up my mind. You’re right. There is only one life and I’m living it. I’ve found an apartment on Spring Street. I just need some air.

Maybe Teri was right. Maybe there is a monster lying in wait inside all of us. Some of us are just better at hiding it from the rest of the world. Cute as that sentiment might be, it didn’t help my children.

Your sister,

Loretta

---

Monster. My mother used the word and so did McCafferty. Round and round it spins through my mind like some haunting refrain I can’t evict. What did she mean by it didn’t help my children? Is she implying that the monster was unleashed? I pop the top on the beer and guzzle down half the bottle in one throat burning drag. Then just as quick as I put the tip to my lips, I pluck it back out and land the bottle over the concrete hard and fast.

Monster. My father is a monster? Antifreeze? Was McCafferty hinting at a homicide?

She said my father turned my mother’s car into a tin can by noon. No one confirmed the transmission theory. But my mother was lucid. Had a damn good driving record, too. The car was nearly fifteen years old. Shit happens and it happened that day.

Right?

But what if…

I stagger to my feet. It feels as if the sky is spinning up above. I’m no lightweight, but this isn’t the beer taking its toll on me. It’s the unpalatable taste of the shit McCafferty shoved down my throat.

It’s time to clear things up. I pluck the keys off the table and drive over to the one person who might be able to help—and it’s not my father.

God knows the respectable judge isn’t going to cop to a couple of homicides.

It would be ridiculous.

This entire nightmare borders on ridiculous.

---

Sherriff Richard Olsen, Concordia County, the sign reads.

I give a quick knock over the door before letting myself in.

“My man.” Rich rises from his seat and pulls up his pants by the waist before presenting me with the empty chair before him.

“Thanks.” The cool leather sinks beneath me as I take a seat. There is something desperately sterile about police stations and hospitals. They feel sanitized, devoid of life and soulless on some level. An irony in and of itself since both establishments are meant to aid us. I toss the letter onto his desk and he pauses a moment before picking it up and reading it.

“Huh.” His eyes bounce over each line once again. “Monster.” Rich purses his lips.

“Maybe they had a fight. Who knows.”

He looks up without moving his head, his chin still planted close to his chest. “You don’t know?”

A moment of silence slices by as I lean in and press into him with my curiosity. “Know what?”

“Your mother filed for divorce a week before the accident. I don’t know if your father was ever served—or if he knew about it.” He folds the paper and slides it back my way as I try to digest the words he just shot at me.

“My parents were happy.” The words come from me numb as I search the floor for answers. “Weren’t they?” That rumored affair Rich tried to sell me still hasn’t penetrated my gray matter. God knows I’m not up for accusing my father. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“Apparently not. At least not your mother.” He leans into his seat and rocks at a slow and steady pace, but those eyes, my mother’s eyes, they pin me with a look that screams figure it out.

“What’s going on? Do you know something?”

“Look”— he wipes his face down with his hand—“you have a lot of shit on your plate right now. You don’t need to go digging up the past, sifting through rumors. There’s no time for this.” He picks up the envelope once again and tosses it to my end of the table.

“You know something.” A shot of adrenaline spikes through me, and suddenly the only thing I want to do is turn this desk on its ear and bash Richard’s head through the window. “You’re right. I am in a shitload of misery, and I certainly don’t need to add to it. So why don’t you tell me what you know and I won’t have to kick your ass and embarrass you in front of the entire precinct?”

“They’ll shoot you in the leg.” A smile warms his face as he rocks back, connecting his fingers at the tips in amusement.

“It will be worth it.” My voice shakes when I say it and Rich blows out a breath, gets up and shuts the door before settling back into his seat. “You just remember, you asked for it. When you can’t sleep at night? Remember that I had no intention of breathing a word.”

“You think I sleep at night?” I lean in, rabid with anger. “What the hell are you keeping from me, Rich? Did my old man do something? Is he a killer?”

His Adam’s apple rises and falls. That doughy, pasty face of his takes on a fight-or-flight expression. “People have wondered. Your mother was a brilliant woman, always stifled by that man. My mother’s words, not mine, but I happen to agree.”

“You think he killed her.” My body goes numb. My ears grow a heartbeat. “My mother was alone. She could have gotten out of the car. Why the hell was she on the railroad tracks to begin with?”

“It’s a common pass through Donaldson Avenue. Witnesses say she was on the tracks a good five minutes before the train came.”

“She had time to escape.” Is he implying a suicide?

“She did have time. She had help, too. A gentleman got out of his car and tried to get her out, but he said the door was jammed. He narrowly jumped off the tracks before the train came barreling through. According to him, she was panicked, screaming that she couldn’t get the door open.”

“Makes no sense. Car stalls on the railroad tracks and the door fails to unlock?”

Rich keeps that iron fisted stare planted over me. “That’s not the part I found odd.”

My head swims with the dark possibilities. “Let me have it.”

“The gentleman said she wasn’t sitting on the driver’s side—she still had her seat belt on.”

The floor sways beneath me.

“Anything else?” My voice comes out hoarse, but Rich simply closes his eyes a moment. I slam my hands over the desk like a gavel. “What else do you fucking know?” I roar it out so loud my voice comes back as an echo.

The door swings open, ushering in an icy breeze right along with two beefy officers with their hands on their weapons.

“It’s fine,” Rich assures the cavalry, and we wait until they seal the door behind them before getting back to this hell I’ve dragged us into. “My mother has always been a little suspicious of what happened with Wilson.”

There it is again. A knife in the gut. First McCafferty, now Rich—Aunt Jolene by proxy.

I lean in. “She thinks my father killed him.” Shit. I sink my head into my hands for a moment. “Do you even know who my father is?”

Rich nods. “He knows his way around the law.”

“He is the law!” My father would have destroyed this office long ago. He prided himself on his perfect little family. His perfect wife, his perfect children. And then it hits me like a semi-truck. “Wilson wasn’t perfect.” I flashback to those hazy days before his death. They fought. They outright hated one another. “McCafferty said he was poisoned with antifreeze—said they found ethylene glycol in his bloodstream.”

“Shit.” He sits up a little straighter. “And Rachel?”

“What about Rachel?” My God. Has my father been offing his imperfect children? His imperfect wife?

“What did she die from?” Rich opens his laptop and his fingers start dancing over the keyboard.

“I don’t know. Female issues. My mother mentioned it once, and that was all I cared to know. She was dead.”

He shakes his head at the screen. “I’ll talk to my mother. She made a comment once about it being enough already. That some people weren’t above the law.”

“My father.” A wound so deep, so inherently painful spears through me. It tears my heart from top to bottom. How could this be? How could any of this be?

I shuffle out into the bitter cold night, my body anesthetized by the sting. Everything I’ve known, everything I’ve ever felt has been challenged tonight, challenged over the last few months, stretching as far back as that fateful summer day in L.A.

The wages of sin is death. My father beat that mantra into each one of us. And if what Aunt Jolene suspects to be true is a reality—my father appointed himself God over the lives of my mother and my siblings.

Shit. I slump against the side of my truck. He couldn’t have gotten away with this. He didn’t do any of it, did he? Why would he kill Rachel? It doesn’t make sense.

I drive home dazed, out of my mind, enough adrenaline pumping through me to shoot me to the moon.

Just when I didn’t think life could dole out another curveball my way, wham, right in my face.

My phone bleats and lights up. I pull over in the event it’s an emergency. In the event this nightmare has reversed itself and Reagan is home where she should be. But it’s a text from my father.

Pick up some milk if you can. Need to take my medicine with it.

Pick up some milk.

Would you like a side of antifreeze with that?

---

The Sunshine Market is open late—open from sunshine to sunshine the slogan reads. Reagan and I read it once together in sync. We found it hysterical and engaged in a good old-fashioned belly laugh over it.

It doesn’t sound so damn funny anymore.

A small gray sedan makes the left on Imperial at the same time I do and I frown. Now that McCafferty has all but let me in on the fact Allison and I have a stalker, I’m mindful of shit like this.

I pull into the Sunshine Market parking lot, and sure enough, about a minute later they do the same. Long hair, lots of it. Full double-handed grip on the steering wheel. My money is on Monica. Although she wouldn’t technically qualify as the stalker who took that picture of us. She’s a stalker of another color.

I get out of the truck and pretend to tie my shoe as the scuttle of heels click-clacks from the distal end of the parking lot moving in this direction.

“Pssst!”

I get up and stride back there, fully expecting to find my ex wearing her crazy out in the open like a straitjacket. Something that I’m pretty certain she’ll be wearing sooner than later—and my heart stops.

Unless Monica has traded her harsh midnight hued locks for something softer with a touch of auburn, her full, tall frame for something far more petite, this isn’t her—and if I’m right about the alternative—I strongly wish it was. I start to back away just as the girl comes into the light.

“Hailey?” My heart climbs into my throat as I grab her and stalk off to the nearest bushes. “Are you insane? What are you doing here?” My body riots as adrenaline takes over, and I’m pretty sure I’m on the cusp of having a stroke.

That megawatt smile of hers goes off and some moronic part of my dick starts to respond.

“I’m here for you.” She cups her hands over my cheeks. “God, I’ve missed you.” Her voice is breathy, taming the night into long white plumes. “Look!” She takes my hands and leads them to her stomach, bulging and hard, the size of a basketball under her sweater.

“Holy shit,” I mumble.

“It’s yours. Faulk knew it, and I had to move out.”

“Move out?”

“He wanted me to.” She shrugs her shoulder into my chest. “I need you. I need your help. I don’t have any money or anywhere to go.”

“What?” I slap myself over the forehead, trying to will myself out of this nightmare with no end. “I can’t help you. My daughter—she’s missing.”

“Oh, I know. And I’m very sorry about that. But it’s been a month. So I guess that’s it, right?” The whites of her eyes shine like flashlights. “I mean, it’s pretty much over. Eventually, you’ll have to move on. And what better way than with a fresh start?” Her finger curls under my chin as she forces me to look at her. “With me—and our baby.”

My breathing becomes labored, and my body shakes like a dog at the vet. Never mind that I’m still not over the last trauma.

“Stay here.” A rife panic begins to fill me. “I’ll get some money.”

I head into the store, bedraggled, scared shitless at the trajectory of how fast this disaster has mutated. It all started with Hailey—with my dick. If I were smart, I’d do away with both of them.

I pick up the milk in haste, pay, then head straight for the ATM. Five transactions and a thousand dollars later, I head back to find her near her car, milling around, just inviting that nutcase that’s been stalking me to snap another picture.

“Here.” I practically thrust it at her. If it had fallen, I wouldn’t have picked it up. “Get a room for the night. In the morning head to your mother’s, a friend’s, anywhere but here. I’ve got too much to deal with right now and I can’t handle”— I lift my hands in a fit of frustration—“this.”

“This?” She places her hands gently over her swollen belly. “This happens to be your child, James.” Her voice pitches an octave and panic fills me.

“Shhh!” I try to calm her down, but it’s too late.

She flings the bills in the air and makes it rain twenties. “I don’t need your stupid money. What I need is a little respect from the father of my baby!” Her voice trails into the sky like a razor sawing through steel, making my ears wish they could bleed, my soul wish it could vacate the premises.

“Look”—she hugs her belly, annunciating its girth that much more—“if you’re afraid of what Allison is going to say, don’t worry. I’ll talk to her woman to woman.”

“Allison isn’t going to take well to this news no matter if you or the Pope talks to her. She’s going to be furious. She’s already out for blood. She is in no way going to welcome you or this child into our lives.”

A quick, angry huff escapes her lips. “Then tell her you’ll see her around because you have a new family to deal with.”

“I’m not dealing with this!” I whisper so loud I may as well have screamed it. “Are you that dense? My God, I thought you were a brilliant woman, and here you are not seeing the forest for the trees.” I grip her by the arms and shrink down to eye level, begging her to see my point. “If you just find somewhere to stay, I’ll get in touch with you. I’ll help you with the baby. I’ll help you with money, anything you want. Just for the love of God, do not show up on my front doorstep. Don’t follow me around town. There’s a good chance we’ve already been spotted.”

She growls at me as her fury grows. “I hate this. And right now, I hate you, James Price.” She stalks off, and I watch as she gets back into the seemingly innocent car and peels out of the parking lot with a hostile squeal.

“Shit.” I fall to my knees and pick up every last bill I can find.

I’m going to be a father. I’m not sure I quite believe it. I’m not sure I quite believe anything anymore.