Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [62]
“And what did Caroline tell you?”
“The same thing. Your mother fell.” He sounded as if he’d said these words a hundred times. As if he’d been answering these questions over and over. His voice was even, practiced.
“What did the police say?”
My father flinched again, almost imperceptibly this time. “Why do you ask that?”
“They must have looked into it.”
“They did.”
“And what did they find?” I asked.
“Nothing. Your mother fell. There was nothing else to find.”
We were both quiet for a second, my father seemingly lost in thoughts of the past, while I tried to screw up the nerve to ask where my brother and sister were now, and why I hadn’t seen them. I decided to start with what happened after that day.
“So, afterward, Caroline went to boarding school, right?”
“That’s correct. Brighton Academy. It was one of the best in the area.”
I nodded. “And Dan?”
My father looked down at the table, then back at me. “College. At Michigan State. You remember that.”
I nodded again. That I did remember. “Did Dan graduate?”
A small smile lit my father’s mouth. “Yes,” he said, his voice tinged with pride. “A degree in business.”
“Why didn’t we go to the graduation?”
The grin died away. “He didn’t want us there.”
“Us?” I said. “He didn’t want us there?”
My father dipped his head, almost a nod, a gesture he often made in court when he was about to clarify a point. “I should rephrase. He didn’t want me there.”
“Why?”
“Oh, Hailey, do we have to get into this?” His eyes were strained, and I watched him as he picked up the whiskey and sipped it again.
“Dad, I’m sorry, but I have to get this out of my head. I have to know.” I didn’t say that it was dysfunctional never to have spoken about my mother’s death, that I had received a strange letter that seemed to refer to my mother being murdered. I didn’t say that I’d been in Caroline’s house, that I was thinking of traveling to the Southwest to look for Dan. And it made me feel awful to hide something from my father while at the same time demanding painful answers from him. I had never deceived him before. But something new had snuck into my feelings about him—a suspicion brought on by the fact that he had kept me away from people who were important, information that was important.
Another dip of the head from my father. Continue.
“Why didn’t we go to Dan’s graduation?”
“Your brother was very angry about my separation from your mother. He thought I had abandoned her.”
“Did you?” I said this in a quiet voice, afraid to stop the flow of words coming out of his mouth.
He shot me a look, annoyance, maybe hurt, but then it was gone. “Of course not. If you must know, your mother asked for time apart.”
The group at the bar became boisterous again. My father sent them an irritated glance before he turned back to me. He seemed impatient now, rather than sad, like he wanted to take his medicine and leave.
“So you just let Dan go? You never kept in touch with him?”
“I tried, Hailey. I tried. But he moved away, first to Detroit and then out West, and he really wanted nothing to do with the Sutters anymore. I believe he even changed his name.”
“To what?”
“Singer, if I’m not mistaken.”
I felt a wash of relief. The truth. All I’d had to do was ask. “And what about Caroline? Did she go to college after boarding school?” I said, still testing him.
He took another sip of his whiskey. It was almost gone now, although he didn’t show any signs that it was affecting him. “Yes, Caroline went from Brighton on to school out East.”
I sank back in my chair. “She went to a university?”
My father nodded and signaled the waiter for a new whiskey. “More coffee?”
“No.” I sat very frozen, praying that I was somehow mistaken, that my father wasn’t lying to my face. “What school did she go to?”
“Yale.”
I almost laughed. Yale? Caroline had gone from a boarding school to a psych ward to a community college in Portland. Nothing Ivy League about that. I felt a hard shield form over me. “And what did she do after that?”
“We lost touch. Like Dan, she wanted to create her own world. She didn’t want to be