Guilty (11 page)

Eighteen

LILA

I
never wanted him there, but he tracked me down anyway. At first I was scared. At first I thought he knew who I was. But he doesn't. He doesn't ask me for my full name. He doesn't ask for my father's name. Or maybe he thinks he knows. He said his friend looked up our phone number; that's how he found the address. But the phone isn't in my name or my dad's name. It's in the name of the last person who lived here and who forgot to tell the phone company he was moving. My father had it on his to-do list: inform the phone company. But he never got around to it. In fact, he'd been thinking it over. Why not just pay the bill when it came and keep the phone. That way, we'd avoid any special connection fee, which, my father said, usually involved a credit check, which he probably wouldn't pass.

Finn doesn't know who I am, but I know who he is. That means I have a chance to find out what happened.

Except I don't keep my mouth shut, which would have been the smart thing. Instead, I decide to ask questions and give unasked-for opinions. In other words, I blow it. He freaks out when I ask if his mother wanted to separate from his father. Well, that's what it sounded like to me. What else does a woman mean when she tells her husband she needs time alone? But then, who asked me? I shouldn't have said anything.

I sip my tea. I'm angry at myself for having the chance to learn something and finding out exactly nothing—well, except that maybe the first Mrs. Newsome was giving some thought to the future of her marriage, no matter what Finn thinks. He was seven years old at the time. What seven-year-old wants to think his parents are going to break up?

What else do I know now that I didn't know before? Nothing useful. His grandmother was against the marriage. I wonder what she had against Finn's father. I want to know because I want to have something against him too. He killed my father. I want to hate him for that instead of hating my father for going over there with a gun and trying to kill him…assuming that was his intention. I keep thinking about Detective Sanders's question:
Did he say anything to you about money, Lila?
According to Finn, he said something to Mr. Newsome about it. It's why he went there in the first place.

I set my mug down on the floor and push myself up off the couch. I go into the dingy little room that I've been trying to think of as my bedroom, even though it isn't as nice as my room at Aunt Jenny's and contains hardly any of my stuff. Most of that is still back home.

Back home. Where I mostly grew up. Where I belong now.

I look around the room. I should just finish packing and get out of here. I have enough money for a bus ticket. I don't need to stay here any longer.

I open the top drawer of a cheap chest of drawers. I feel under my socks and underwear and pull out a file folder. I take it back into the living room with me, sit down and open it. The folder contains everything I know about my father's case, which isn't much. As soon as he was arrested, I was taken by child welfare. They contacted my aunt, and the next thing I knew, I was far away. Aunt Jenny tried to shield me from what was happening, which turned out to be easy. People in Boston weren't interested in something that had happened far away to someone who wasn't a native Bostonian and who hadn't lived in Boston for more than a few months. So the folder was pretty thin—a few clippings and a few things I found on the Internet a little later.

It consisted of the following:

An obituary for the first Mrs. Newsome—Angela Fairlane Newsome. There was a picture. I hadn't looked at it in years, but when I pull out the clipping with the little black-and-white photo, I am stunned to see how much Finn resembles his mother. According to the article, Angela Fairlane was daughter to Albert Finn Fairlane, an eccentric Ivy Leaguer who quit a lucrative law practice to turn inventor and who made a fortune when he patented some gizmos that most people have never heard of but that are used in manufacturing processes all over the world. Angela came from money. She was also an Ivy Leaguer. But, the obituary said, she became a devoted mother to her only son Finn. In other words, she didn't put that Ivy League education to work. At least, not on a job or career of her own. The obituary also noted that she was both a helpmate and business partner to her “beloved husband Robert.”

I see a couple of articles about the burglary and shooting, short items that I had found in Aunt Jenny's house one day after school. They didn't say much, only that Angela Newsome, a thirty-year-old homemaker, was dead after being shot during a break-and-enter at her home on a quiet tree-lined street in an affluent neighborhood. The police suspected that she had surprised a burglar. A follow-up article noted that an arrest had been made and mentioned that Mrs. Newsome's body had been discovered by her seven-year-old son. A final article quoted Mr. Newsome as saying that he was “devastated” by his wife's murder and that he wished that he and his son had stayed home that night instead of going to his place of business, a popular dance club. If they had been home, he said, the burglary and murder never would have happened. He also noted the bitter irony that he had just installed a security system that, somehow, the killer had managed to disable.

Finally, a three-inch-long article about my father's court date, plea and conviction that noted Mr. Newsome's outrage that he had been offered ten to life instead of straight life and his fervent hope that no parole board in the country would ever consider my father for release.

I read each article over twice, and for the first time I consider, really consider, what it must have been like for a seven-year-old boy to find his mother dead in her own bedroom. I consider also what memories must have been prompted by seeing a second murder—the murder of his stepmother—at the hands of the same person who murdered his mother.

I feel sorry for Finn. I really do.

But instead of packing up the rest of my things, instead of calling the landlord and arranging to see him so that I can plead for the refund of the last month's rent, instead of calling the Salvation Army to see if they will pick up the things I have for them or at least help me get them to their store, instead of any of that, I grab my bag and head out the door.

I have to ask five different people before I find someone who can direct me to the nearest library. When I get there, I find I need a library card if I want to sign up to use a computer. I have a local address, so I go ahead and pay a dollar and get a card. I sign up and am told that I will have to wait an hour before a computer is free. No problem. I wait. When my name is finally called, I log on to the Internet and type in my father's name. I find several longer articles about him from the newspaper. I print them out. Then I type in Robert Newsome's name. A lot more information pops up. I scan it and print out the articles that seem the most interesting. Angela Fairlane's name brings up a couple more articles. Her father's name gets me dozens of pages. I scan again and print out the three that have the most information. The only thing that Tracie Newsome's name hits is an engagement notice.

I go to the library desk to retrieve my printing, at ten cents a page. Then I sit down and start to read. I read everything twice. But it doesn't help. Nothing helps. No matter how hard I try, I can't change the facts. I can't make my father anything but a murderer, no matter what he told me and no matter what Dodo remembers or thinks he does.

Nineteen

FINN

I
'm almost home by the time I calm down, and then I feel like a fool. A complete idiot. I went over there to see her and talk to her. I told myself that it was the right thing to do; after all, she lost her father. But did I ask her about that? Did I ask her about what happened? Did I say or do anything to make her feel better?

No.

Instead, I talked about myself one hundred percent of the time. And then I yelled at her. Nice going. Go to someone else's place, accept her hospitality, spill tea all over her furniture, and then ream her out for something that has nothing to do with her.

I don't just feel like an idiot. I
am
an idiot.

I let myself into the house. It's quiet, but I know my dad has to be home because his car is sitting out in front of the garage.

I hear something upstairs.

I go to see what it is. The clothes bags are where I left them, but all of them have been opened and everything inside them is jumbled up and looks like it's been taken out and then stuffed back in instead of folded neatly the way I'd done.

The door to my dad's room is open too. I peek inside, but I don't see my dad.

I hear something again. Muttering. I take a step across the threshold and find my dad on his hands and knees in Tracie's walk-in closet.

“Dad?”

He straightens up so fast that he whacks his head against the underside of a shelf. He curses as he spins around.

“Finn. You gave me a scare.”

He brushes off the knees of his pants. They're his good clothes, the ones he wears to business meetings and to the club. He usually changes out of them as soon as he gets home from work. He's usually pretty fastidious about keeping his clothes in good shape.

“What are you doing, Dad?”

“Just checking,” he says.

“I cleaned out all of Tracie's things for you.”

“So I see.” His eyes are darting all over the now-empty dressing room.

“Is something wrong, Dad?”

His eyes jump back to me.

“Wrong?” he says. “What do you mean?”

“I bagged all of Tracie's things. I folded them up all neatly and everything. But it looks like someone went through them. Were you looking for something?”

“Some jewelry,” he says.

“Jewelry?” Tracie had a lot of jewelry. Some of it is stuff she owned before she married my dad. It's costume jewelry. Junk. It isn't worth anything. My dad bought her some things—an engagement ring and a wedding ring, of course, and a couple of bracelets and earrings for her birthday or for anniversaries or at Christmas.

Then there's the other stuff—the stuff that made me want to strangle her every time I saw her wearing it. It's my mother's jewelry. A lot of it belonged to
her
mother or her grandmother. Beautiful rings and bracelets, necklaces and earrings, all of it worth a lot of money. That's the stuff that was stolen the night my mother died. The police recovered all of it, every single piece. They told my dad he was lucky. Ever since then, my dad has kept it in a safe hidden in his closet. Closing the barn door after the horse has left, he said when the men came to install it. But he's not taking any chances with my mother's jewelry. It's there when Tracie isn't—wasn't—wearing it. She didn't know the combination. I guess he wasn't taking any chances with her either.

“Some earrings are missing,” my father says. “I thought maybe she dropped them somewhere in here. You didn't see them when you were cleaning out her clothes, did you?”

I shake my head.

“Were they valuable?” I ask.

“They belonged to your grandmother.”

And there it is—that feeling that used to roil up inside me whenever I saw Tracie wearing something that used to belong to my mother. Only now I'm looking at my dad and feeling it.

“You're kidding, right?” I say.

My dad's face fills with regret.

“They're around somewhere. She knew how valuable they were. I'm sure she was careful—”

“You just said you thought she dropped them in here. Dropping stuff isn't being careful with it, Dad.” I'm yelling at him. I'm yelling at my dad, who just lost his wife.

He raises his hands. “Take it easy, son.”

I want to take it easy. I know I shouldn't be yelling at him. But I can't stop.

“I can't believe you even let her have them in the first place. They were Mom's. They belonged to her. Grandma gave them to her.”

“That's why I'm looking for them, Finn,” my dad says calmly.

“You wouldn't have to look for them if you hadn't let her wear them,” I say, furious. “Besides, they weren't yours to give. But you did anyway. You gave them to Tracie—” I spit out her name, as if it's something poisonous in my mouth. “You gave them to Tracie, and now look what happened.”

I'm breathing hard. My hands are curled at my sides. All the resentment I felt when he started seeing Tracie, all the contempt I felt for Tracie when she was alive, all the evil, bad things I thought about my dad for even being attracted to her, let alone having married her, comes spilling out. She wasn't as smart as Mom. She didn't care about other people the way Mom did. She spent too much time thinking about how she looked and what other people thought about her. She tried too hard to be sexy.

“Finn, settle down.” There's an edge to my dad's voice.

“She used to walk around in her underwear, Dad, and she didn't care who saw her. She didn't care if
I
saw her. She was a tramp. I hated her.”

I stop as soon as that last sentence is out of my mouth. I stare at my dad. Every muscle in my body tenses involuntarily, and I wait because I am sure my dad is going to hit me.

He steps forward.

I brace myself.

His arms come out.

I know I deserve whatever happens next.

But he doesn't hit me. Instead, he throws his arms around me and pulls me to him. He holds me tightly, and the next thing I know, I am crying.

“I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't mean that. I'm sorry…”

“It's okay, Finn,” he says. His voice is soft and soothing. He doesn't let me go. “I know how you felt about her. You didn't know her like I did. It's okay. I love you, son.”

When I finally pull away from him, I can see that his eyes are watery too, but I don't know if his tears are for me or for Tracie.

“We'll get through this,” he says. “We've been through it before, and we can do it again. We're going to be okay. You believe me, don't you, Finn?”