The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [127]
A steel guitar.
He rocks back on his haunches, tells himself that there is more than one steel guitar in the world, that the guitar’s presence here means nothing. But it is Chicken George’s guitar. Go-Go went back for it, went back to where Chicken George fell and took the guitar. Why?
Because Chicken George never touched him. Because it was all a lie. And Go-Go wanted to be caught in the lie, wanted someone to ask him about it.
When he comes downstairs, his mother is in her chair, but no longer wrapped up in her book.
“You knew it was up there,” he says, not bothering with his professional techniques, not setting up a careful path of questions to which she must answer yes, so she can’t deny the established facts. His father might not have been handy, but he would have done a better job at nailing that door in place. Go-Go, too, for that matter. His mother hid the guitar, his mother nailed the attic up and moved the stepladder, hoping that it would deter anyone who decided to go up there. How long has she kept Go-Go’s secret?
“Yes,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because I knew it meant something.”
“What? What did you think it meant?”
“Something bad.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Clem hears the front doorbell, a conversation between Gwen and a man. Karl? Has Karl relented and decided to let Annabelle spend Easter weekend here? He feels Annabelle’s absence keenly. As much as he wants Gwen to stop being an idiot and go back to Karl, he likes the fact that Annabelle has been here almost every weekend. He has started reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to her, over Gwen’s protestations. Gwen says Annabelle’s too young, which is probably true. But Clem thinks that Gwen’s real problem is that she wants to read the book to Annabelle and he is usurping her. He is. Given his age, there is so much he will never do with this grandchild. He will never run alongside her two-wheeler. He couldn’t carry her even before he broke his hip. He feels as if he has missed out twice-over on being a real grandfather. Miller’s children lived too far away, and now Annabelle has arrived when he’s too old. He might not even see her through grade school. Gwen might have a little more empathy, he thinks.
In general, Gwen might have a little more empathy. The problem is, she thinks she does. But Gwen’s idea of empathy is that she knows how she would feel in any given situation. If she fell down and broke something, she would throw herself into physical therapy, do everything right, so why won’t Clem? If she were Karl, she would pursue her runaway spouse, do whatever was necessary to woo her back. Gwen has a good heart, but a person can have a good heart and be self-involved to the point of blindness.
Yet it is Clem who does not register, not right away, how much distress his youngest daughter is in when she enters his room with a lunch tray.
“I thought I heard someone at the door,” he says.
“You did. Tim Halloran stopped by.”
“What did the lummox want?”
“He’s not.”
“What?”
“He’s not a lummox, actually. Not really. He can be crude and coarse, and he was kind of a bully as a boy, but he’s smart and surprisingly . . . ” She does not find the word she’s looking for. “We have to go out later. Tim and I. We need to . . .” Another sentence left unfinished, and Clem finally realizes his daughter is agitated,