Closer Than Blood

control.

“He was so young and it was so final.”

“So, are you going to look into Jason’s case?” Steven asked. Kendall shook her head, a rote response to a question she’d already considered.

“No,” she said, watching her son slide into a chair next to her.

“Of course not. But I am worried about Lainie.” The shift in conversation interested Josh. It was like the second half to an ongoing dialog that Steven and Kendall must have engaged in earlier.

“Why dig into it now?” he asked. Again, Steven answered for Kendall.

“You cops like the word hinky, don’t you? Something about the case that bothered people. Rumors. Gossip, whatever. There’s always a lot of time for speculation in Kitsap County. Not a lot of other things to do.” Kendall didn’t want to cause an argument at dinner, but she was irritated with her husband.

“There were some rumors, yes,” she said.

“Look,” Josh said, leaning closer to her, “I know you. You’re gonna dig.” Kendall knew he was right. They both were.

“All right. Probably. Four deaths around one person, that’s pretty remarkable odds.” Josh knitted his brows as he swallowed his 92-point pinot—a number he’d exaggerated when he presented the bottle at the front door. It was only an 88. He held out his fingers and wiggled three of them.

“Four?” Josh ticked off two of them.

“Jason Reed and her husband in Tacoma? That’s two.” Steven nodded as he prepared to drop the bomb.

“And the husband before that. Never knew the guy. None of us did. And her mother—that was quite a few years ago. A suicide.” Josh nearly spilled his wine.

“You’re shitting me.” Kendall looked over at Cody, who was happily enjoying the gooey top layer of his lasagna. Seeing the boy, Josh Anderson’s face went a little red. Despite what everyone thought about him, he knew better than to curse in front of a kid.

“Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice.

“But you’re kidding, right?”

“Afraid not,” Steven said.

“Husband number one bit the dust on a Hawaiian vacation a few years back.” Josh leaned across the table toward Kendall. Clearly, he was enthralled by the conversation.

“Nice. That Tori seems like trouble.” Kendall didn’t respond and Steven poured more wine into each of their glasses.

“Yeah, as I recall, that Tori was like a whirlpool,” Steven said.

“She can suck everyone down in her misery.”

“I guess,” Kendall finally added.

“Like a whirlpool.”

Kendall Stark rinsed the dinner plates of the sticky residue of pasta and ricotta before aligning them just so into the open grate of the dishwasher. The breeze had kicked up a little and the flowering plum by the window had lost most of its petals, sending a creamy pink drift across the patio. Josh had gone, and Cody was tucked in down the hall of the old house. She slid the dishwasher shut with her hip as she dried her hands on a white-and-red checkered towel. The evening had not been bad. Not one hundred percent bad, anyway.

“Look,” Steven said after Josh left, “I know you cared about Jason. I get that. He was special to you and he’s gone. I’m not threatened by that.” His words were undeniably heartfelt, yet they made Kendall feel uncomfortable. There were areas that had been off limits even in a marriage as good as theirs had been. Jason Reed was one of those areas.

“I know,” she said, lying a little to make him feel better. The minute she said it, she questioned it. Why do I do that? she thought. Why do I care about making someone feel better all the time? As the dishwasher started to hum and Steven went to turn off the lights, Kendall thought of Jason and how she’d been so haunted by his death more than fifteen years ago. The dinner that night. The talk about Tori’s latest tragedy, if that’s what it was, had released old feelings. Feelings she avoided. She wondered what her life might have been like if Jason hadn’t died. She wondered what everyone’s life might have been like. Most of all, she felt sad that those thoughts hadn’t evaporated over time. Not as she’d been told they would. Not as they should have. Fifteen years, she assured herself, was long enough to grieve.

With Cody already asleep, Kendall turned off the red, white, and blue tugboat lamp by his bedside. She brushed her lips against his straw-colored hair and kissed him good night. She lifted the always-sticky double-hung window a crack to let in a little night air. Not too much. Just a trickle of cool. Cody was one of those kids who slept hot, often kicking off the covers by morning. Sleep, my baby, she thought. By the time she got to their bedroom, Steven was already in bed, smelling of toothpaste, and looking at his sales call sheet for the morning. Kendall had a visit with her mother in mind for the next day, but given the late hour, it was the next day.

“Don’t you ever take a break?” Kendall asked as she undressed.

“When you’re on commission,” he said, “there’s no such thing as a break. Particularly in this day and age.” The publishers of the magazine Steven represented had made a big push to focus on electronic advertising. Steven had gamely gone along with the change. The results were not as encouraging as he’d hoped. It appeared that hunters and fishermen didn’t necessarily take their laptops when they went out in the sticks. It appeared that Wi-Fi had not caught up with the great outdoors. Sales were down sharply and he was feeling the pressure.

“Tomorrow’s a busy day all the way around,” she said, slipping into a chambray blue pair of pajama bottoms and an oversize T-shirt.

“I’m going to see Mom. Run some errands. Solve a crime.”

“Sexy look, girl,” he said, eyeing her as she crawled next to him.

“I’ll show you sexy.” She kissed him. That was all the cajoling Steven needed. He set down the paperwork that had held his attention. His hands found the softness of her skin underneath the T-shirt. She let out a sigh. They were tenderly entwined, tangled in the bedsheets.

“Didn’t take much,” she said.

“Did it?” Steven’s stubbled face skimmed the surface of her breast as he slid lower into the bed. She still felt the excitement that came with the touch of her husband.

“No, baby. Not much.” Neither one said another word about Jason Reed. If his ghost had hovered around the dining room only a couple hours ago, he’d vanished once more.

CHAPTER NINE

Tacoma

Tears filled her eyes and there was no stopping them. I shouldn’t feel this sad, but I do, Laura Connelly thought. Her ex-husband’s death had left her feeling bereft in a way that she would have told someone a week ago was completely impossible. Alex had left her for another woman. Betrayed her. Left their son. And yet my heart aches? Why? At her home in Fircrest, just south of Tacoma, a brokenhearted Laura moved about her seventeen-year-old son’s bedroom, picking up what he’d carelessly left on the floor. It was early in the morning, and Parker hadn’t come home. He’d been doing a lot of that lately—staying with his best friend, Drew. Laura was a petite strawberry blonde, with green eyes that she made the color of clover with tinted contact lenses. In her mid-forties, she was a single mother with no prospects for being anything but. Her world was about her son. It had been that way for a very long time. Until that week, Parker had his dad, too. But no more. She shook her head as she looked around. Parker was no more a slob than any boy his age, but she’d noticed a little improvement in areas that mattered. He’d asked her to buy new jeans and a couple of new shirts. He even wanted new underwear.

“Not boxers, Mom, boxer briefs. They fit better.” Point taken. In fact, everything Parker wanted those days seemed to reflect a need to improve his appearance. He’d been working out, bulking up his adolescent frame to one that showed the definition of a young man’s physique. Not quite six-pack abs, but getting there. When he wasn’t Skyping on his computer, he was out running or lifting weights in the basement. Parker was growing into a young man, and whatever she thought of Alex, she knew that only in death—senseless, untimely, tragic—would he leave his son behind. A pair of Tacoma police officers came the morning after the shooting to let them know what happened. Parker got up from the breakfast table and bolted for the door. He didn’t