The Hiding Place

Chapter Forty

“Dad?”

The house wasn’t just quiet-no TVs playing, no conversation or music. It felt quiet. Still. Like something had been removed. But she worried that the thing that had been removed had always been in her head: her own notion of home. Did the place just feel different because of what Detective Stynes had told her?

Janet went down the hall to the bedroom. The door was open, the bedclothes pushed down. The TV was off. She stepped back into the hallway. The bathroom was empty as well.

“Dad?”

As she drove home from work with Detective Stynes’s words spinning through her head, she tried to make sense of it all. And worst of all, it did make sense in ways Janet didn’t want to admit. Justin’s paternity made for a grand unifying theory of her father-why did he refuse to speak about the past? Why did he not cry at Justin’s funeral? Why did he throw those photos away? Because Justin wasn’t his? And the fact that it started to make sense made Janet feel even worse.

Her dad had known all along and didn’t tell Janet. Her mom must have known all along and never told. Who were these people after all?

Janet walked back out to the living room and into the kitchen. The lights were off, the late-afternoon sun slanting in through the back window. The trees in the yard provided shade and made the kitchen darker than the rest of the house during the summer. He was there, sitting at the kitchen table, an open bottle of beer in front of him. He didn’t say anything when he saw her, but he studied the look on her face.

“Is Ashleigh home?” Janet asked.

He shook his head. “She’s out with that boy.”

It looked to Janet like he knew, like he was anticipating the very question she was about to ask, but she asked anyway.

“Why did you provide that DNA sample, Dad?”

He nodded his head. There was nothing left to hide. He asked her to sit down across the table from him, and she did.

“It’s true,” he said. “That’s why I gave the sample to the police. I suspected it was true. Believed it really, all these years. I saw this as an opportunity to end the speculation for both of us.”

“You knew?”

“I suspected,” he said. “Your mother suspected, too. Nobody knew for sure. Nobody ever did a test or anything. Until now.”

“You wanted them to find out? With this test?”

“There’s no other way to prove it,” he said. “And I wanted you to find out. I thought you should know. This business with Justin and this man in the jail, I watch it tearing you apart. And now Ashleigh’s getting involved. We don’t need it, Janet. It was time to end it, and I hoped this would be the thing to do it.”

“Who’s Justin’s father?”

“I figured you would be able to guess already. It’s someone who was close to us at one time.”

Janet started to speak, then stopped herself. She thought about it.

“Ray Bower,” she said.

Her dad nodded. “Our best friends, the Bowers. Your best friend, too. Michael. Your mom and Ray had an affair back when you all were little.”

Her father didn’t meet her eye. He looked at the tabletop as he spoke. She saw the pain etched on his face, something that hadn’t left him even after twenty-five years. She thought about backing away and not making him relive all of it. But her desire-her need-to know outweighed any concern she felt for her dad. She’d waited too long to know these things, things she didn’t even know she needed to know.

“Did you know about this when Justin was born?”

He sipped his beer. “No. I suspected something was going on between them before Justin was born. They were awfully cozy, the two of them. More than you would expect from a man and a woman who are just supposed to be friends. But when Justin was born, I tried to put those thoughts aside. Your mother was a good mother-she really was. You know that, right?”

“I do.”

“I don’t want that memory to change for you. This story doesn’t invalidate what she was to you or what you remember her to be. You got that?”

“I’ve got it, Dad.”

“She was devoted to both of you, you and Justin. But when Justin was about two, I guess, things started to change again. I noticed the flirtations between her and Ray, just like before. They made jokes that only the two of them laughed at. They shared looks, you know?” He shook his head. “I hate to even say it. It makes me sound like a goddamned woman. But I knew something was going on there. Hell, maybe I even accepted it a little bit. I thought whatever it was would blow over, that it would cool off. I thought as long as we had the kids, your mother and I, that it wouldn’t matter what went on with anything else. I guess I thought that would trump everything. Little did I know.”

“No one could blame you for saying or doing anything.”

“I know. But I didn’t do anything. I just stewed. I think I deserve more blame for that, for just sitting there and taking it like an asshole.”

He stood up and placed his empty beer bottle in the sink. He reached into the refrigerator and brought out another one, twisted the cap off, and drank.

“Would you get me that wine?” Janet asked.

He grabbed the wine bottle and a glass and brought them to the table. He sat down with his beer while Janet poured her own drink. She needed it to listen to the rest of his story.

“Remember how fair-haired Justin was?” he asked. “Completely blond?”

“Sure.”

“Neither your mom nor I were blond, even as kids.”

“But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“He didn’t look like me, Janet. I could tell. I know you don’t like to think about it, but you look like me. But Justin, do you know who he looked like? His coloring, the shape of his mouth?”

“Michael.”

“Right. I wouldn’t have thought about it, but my suspicions made me look at those things closely. Janet, this is awful to say, but Justin just never felt like my kid. Not like you did. Not even the way Ashleigh does. Something told me he wasn’t mine.”

“But you never asked Mom?”

“Never. I didn’t want to know the answer. I came close a hundred times. Lying in bed, sitting at this table.”

“So you never talked about it?”

“We talked about it. Once. One day. That’s when I found out everything for sure.”

Janet tried to remember the times she had seen her father cry. She could remember only one-at her mother’s funeral. Janet’s recollections of Justin’s funeral were fuzzy, so she could rely only on Madeline’s memories and the words she heard from her father in the kitchen. But it seemed safe to say he’d shed tears only for her mother, and while he silently cried in the kitchen, his shoulders shaking a little, his face buried in his hands, she decided she really didn’t know what to do. She stood up and came around to his side of the table and placed her arm around his back. He didn’t acknowledge the gesture, but it seemed to bring him relief. His tears slowed and then stopped pretty quickly after that, and Janet returned to her chair after first grabbing a box of tissues off the counter and placing them in front of her dad.

He used one to wipe his face, his big hand making the gesture seem odd and almost comical. He took another drink and cleared his throat.

“I’m still crying over her,” he said. “Like a fool.”

“I think we can all relate to having strong feelings for someone, whether it’s good for us or not,” Janet said. “When did you talk to her about all of this?”

“About the affair?”

“Yes.”

“The day Justin died.”

“That’s when she told you?”

“That morning. Before we knew anything was wrong. That’s why I didn’t go to work that day. And when the police came, we told different stories. Mom said I was home, but I said I went in to work like any other day. I lied. I knew I didn’t go, but I lied to them because I didn’t want to have a bunch of questions asked. ‘Why didn’t you go in to work as usual?’ That kind of thing. I tried to keep it simple by not telling the truth. Later that day, Mom changed her story because I told her I didn’t want people to know the real reason I was home that day. It was embarrassing. And it really didn’t matter, because Justin was gone, and that was everybody’s focus.”

“Did the police ask you about the contradiction then?”

“I kept expecting them to, but they didn’t. I don’t know why. I think once they heard about a suspect being in the park, they zoomed in on that. I know that cop, Stynes, came here the other day because he suspected me. I know that. But they didn’t have any reason to suspect me besides that. I had no record. I never hurt you kids.”

Janet didn’t argue with him, but she knew her father’s detachment and demeanor made him a target as well. These were the same things that made Janet suspect him, the very things they were talking about in the kitchen. Her father felt emotionally detached from Justin his whole life-and that detachment could easily be read as suspicious.

“So she told you that day? Early in the day?”

“First thing. She sent you kids out of the house. She never did that, but she didn’t want either of you to hear. I guess she didn’t want that to be a memory of us you carried around. There were always a lot of people in the park. Mothers that she knew. She thought you’d be safe.” He sighed. “Once you were gone, she told me she was going to leave me for Ray. And Ray was going to leave Rose. The two of them were going to be together. I don’t know what she thought was going to happen to you kids, but I guess it only mattered for you and Michael. Justin was probably theirs.”

“She told you that during the same conversation?”

“She told me she suspected. She suspected pretty strongly. Around the time Justin would have been conceived, let’s just say things were pretty frosty between your mom and me. That’s when I suspected her of being with Ray the first time. She told me she didn’t think Justin was mine because she thought she’d only been with Ray. We would have had to do a blood test and all that, but pretty soon there’s a police car in our driveway. Someone at the park told the police who we were and where we lived. It’s safe to say our focus shifted a little at that moment. Your mom fell to pieces because she was worried about Justin. I was, too, I guess, but let’s just say that conversation with your mom, as difficult as it was, opened my eyes a little bit, too. I understood why I had felt the way I had about Justin. I guess I felt vindicated. Some things made sense, things that for so long I had thought were just paranoid and stupid fears.”

“But you went along,” Janet said. “You stood by Mom’s side through the whole thing. You didn’t leave her.”

“Would you?” he said, sounding almost angry. “How could I? She needed me. And if I left, I’d be raising a whole boatload of new questions. Remember, the press and the police were following everything so closely. I didn’t want to raise any red flags. Besides, I did have a kid to think about. I had you-and I knew you were mine.”

Janet felt the tears stinging her eyes. She held them back. “You stayed with her after that, though. After they found Justin and the funeral and the trial. It could have been all over then. All of it. You didn’t owe her anything at that point. She cheated on you. And you…you kept this all hidden away inside you.”

“What was your mother like after that?” he asked. “You remember, don’t you?”

Janet did. It wasn’t difficult to summon the memories of her mother in the years after Justin’s death. The nights crying, the vacant stares during the day. The slow, steady decline of her health. She was different after Justin’s death. She was gone, shattered. She was there, she was present in Janet’s life, but Janet often felt like her mother had died that day in the park along with her brother.

“I remember.”

“I couldn’t leave her then,” he said. “She was broken. A shell. Whatever she had planned or had with Ray appeared to be over, too.” He rubbed his hand over his chin, across the gray stubble growing there. “I loved her, Janet. Always did, always will. I couldn’t walk away when she really needed me. She blamed herself for Justin’s death, you know? That’s what killed her. The guilt more than the grief.”

“She blamed herself because-”

“You kids wouldn’t have gone to the park alone that day if it hadn’t been for her needing to talk to me. If it hadn’t been for the affair, she would have gone with you kids, and she believed she wouldn’t have let Justin out of her sight. She was reckless and distracted because of our problems.”

“I was supposed to be watching him-”

“No. No. You were seven years old. No. That was not your fault. The adults were to blame for this one. The adults and that guy who killed Justin. Don’t blame yourself for that. Not for one minute.”

Janet heard him, but her mind skipped ahead to other things. Michael. Michael came to town asking questions about Ray’s possible involvement in Justin’s death. If Ray was really Justin’s father, would that make him more or less likely to have committed the crime?

“Dad?” Janet said. “Did Ray know about all of this? Did he know he was Justin’s father?”

Her dad took a drink of his beer. He seemed to be thinking over his answer. “I know he meant to leave Rose. That very day, the day Justin died, the same scene that was playing out at our house was playing out at theirs. I always assumed that’s how Michael ended up in the park that day as well. Ray was telling Rose about the affair and that he was leaving her.” Her dad paused. “Your mom thought Ray might have been coming to our house that morning, after he told Rose. I guess he had some chivalric notion of telling me man-to-man. But he never showed up, if he even planned to. Justin disappeared, and the police showed up. And that was that.”

“Ray might have been coming over here that day?”

“Yes.”

“From their house?”

“I guess so.”

“Do you know what that means, Dad?” Janet asked.

Her father might be many things, but he wasn’t slow. She could see his face as he connected the dots. “You’re saying he would have had to walk through the woods? He would have walked right where Justin was killed?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said. “The Bowers almost always drove when they came to our house. Even if he did walk, it doesn’t prove anything. Maybe he walked, saw the commotion, and turned around and went home.”

“You’re defending this man?” Janet said. “The man who ruined your marriage, and you’re defending him.”

“They arrested a man. They had a trial. He had pornography in his room. You saw him at the park with Justin.” He pointed at her. “You did. Ray Bower may be a lot of things, but he’s not a killer. Why would he kill his own kid?”

Janet already knew she couldn’t answer that question. She couldn’t answer any of these questions.

But she knew whom she wanted to talk to about it all.

“I’m going to go see Michael.”

“Wait.”

Janet didn’t stand up. Her dad didn’t look at her. He held his hand to his mouth, his thumbnail between his front teeth. She knew he wanted to say something, but he wasn’t saying it.

Then she understood. He was embarrassed. He had just told her the most painful, embarrassing event of his life, something he had kept to himself for twenty-five years. And she wanted to go tell someone else about it. The whole town would find out if the news broke.

“We have to do this, Dad,” she said. “We have to find out what happened.”

He didn’t say yes or no. He didn’t even nod.

But Janet knew he agreed.