Closer Than Blood

comb and changed the direction of her part.

“Hi, Lainie,” she said into the mirror. Inside, she knew relief would come once she took care of the final loose end in her life. Her sister.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Tacoma

Parker opened his laptop and clicked on the icon for the webcam. Tori had her back to the camera. She was wearing the red teddy. She’d told him that she only wore that on special occasions—the times when they’d be together. In the hotel in Seattle that first summer. The time they’d made love on the soapstone island in the kitchen. The night his father was set aside for good. Parker was about to speak when he noticed a man’s voice, then some laughter. He turned up the volume because he couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Despite what the Radio Shack clerk had promised when he made the purchase, the sound quality was only good when the person talking directed his or her attention right at the built-in microphone.

“He thinks I’m pregnant,” she said.

“I know. Stupid sap,” the male voice said. Parker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It had to be some kind of a joke. Who was Tori talking to? Tori crawled onto the bed, unaware that she was being watched.

“The other day when I had a glass of wine, he told me that it might hurt our baby. I told him that the doctor said that a glass of wine or two is good for it.”

“You’ve got him wrapped around your finger,” the man said. Parker started to shake. None of this could or should be happening—she was his soul mate. They’d done the unthinkable, all for love. All that they’d ever wanted had been built on a big lie.

“Young, dumb, and full of cum,” she said. Who was she talking to? He couldn’t see. The voice seemed a little familiar, but not so much that he could identify it. Parker slammed the laptop shut, imagining that the noise reverberated all the way to North Junett Street and startled her. Her. She. The woman he loves. The woman who told him he was a man. The woman who had asked him to prove his love with a gun and a knife. Parker started to cry, guttural, deep—heart-wrenchingly so. He buried his face in a pillow as he sobbed and screamed. It was his eighteenth birthday. Everything that he thought was true was a lie. He was not a man. He was a fool. He got up and rifled through his bag as if there was something he could take to end his life. The medicine to control his acne probably couldn’t do that much. He looked for a razor, but he’d forgotten to pack one. He only shaved once a week. He thought of his dad. How his dad had showed him how to shave with the back of a comb when he was five.

“Dad, I’m sorry. Dad, can you hear me? Forgive me.” Parker was frantic. There was nothing there to end his life, and once that thought was accepted as reality, perfect, clear, there was only one thing to do. If he could not die, he’d have to face up to what he’d done.

When Parker Connelly closed his eyes, all he saw was a river of red. When he held his hand over his ears, he could still hear the guttural sounds made by the minister he’d murdered. His hand could still feel the grip of the blade and the ease with which he sunk it into Mikey Walsh’s neck and abdomen, draining him of blood and life. And while he doubted he could ever shake the images, the smells, the experience of murder, he didn’t want to give voice to what he did afterward. Not to her. Not to Tori. He didn’t tell her how he’d sat down and cried before going inside to do what she needed done. He knew he was in love with her. That he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life. But he also knew how wrong all of that was. How twisted the fantasy had become. It was as if he’d been sleeping, dreaming, and now he was awake. He closed his eyes. Red. He started to cry out, but the sounds he made into the pillow were the same sounds that Pastor Mikey had made. That his father had made. He felt that his life was over. That there was nothing to do but kill himself. Stop the pain. Stop all of the red. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to his mother. She deserved more than that. He opened his phone and called her.

“Mom,” he said.

“Parker. I’ve been worried sick. Where are you?”

“Mom, I want to come home.”

“Come home, baby. I’ll come and get you.”

“Mom, I killed that man.” Laura refused to cry.

“I know. I know you did. Why? Honey?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“You’re calling me because you can. I’ll come and get you.”

“Mom, it’s Tori,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“She’s in love with me. I’m in love with her. She said we could be together. She wants us to get married.”

“Parker, I don’t know. . . .” Laura wanted her son to come home. She didn’t want to push him away.

“We can talk about all of that.”

“She shot Dad. She made me shoot him, too. He was dead when I shot him. I just couldn’t do what she wanted.” Laura was crying now but fighting hard to sound calm.

“Where are you? I’ll come and get you.”

“Mom, she’s going to kill her sister. She’s going to switch places with Lainie.”

“Where are you, Parker?”

“I’m at the American Inn off I-5, south of Tacoma.”

“Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”

Laura Connelly had not held her son that closely in a long time. He’d not said a word the entire way home from the motel. He stared out the window, and she let him be quiet. Whatever was really hurting him was deep, deeper than she could understand. She knew enough not to provoke him. When they got inside, she led him to the sofa, where they sat together. Almost immediately, he’d slumped against her, letting her absorb his pain. In every way, except for the awareness she had that he was nearly a grown man, it felt like a mother holding her baby. He was taller than her, stronger than her. Yet there he was warm, sweating, sobbing quietly in her arms. Between gulps of air and a torrent of tears he let some words pass his lips.

“I thought she loved me,” he said.

“She said she did.” Laura patted him gently, almost so softly that she wasn’t sure he’d even feel it.

“I know,” she said, though she did not know at all.

“I’m sure she did.” He shuddered a little, unwinding, unspooling.

“She and I were going to get married on Monday. We were going to fly away to Bermuda.” Laura knew how fragile Parker was just then. She knew what kind of a manipulator Tori could be, but even this was far beyond anything she could have guessed. There was no girlfriend. At least not a girlfriend that she could have imagined for her son.

“You were wanting that to happen,” she said, almost a question. Parker took a breath.

“No, Mom. She and I were soul mates. We’re going to have a baby.” A baby? This was too much. It seemed an impossibility. He was only a teenager. She was a grown woman. There was no way that there was going to be any baby. If it was true, there was a deep sickness inside Tori. If it was not true, her son was deluded, and dangerously so. Every explanation, every excuse she could conjure, came at her like Niagara. With so many explanations, so many possibilities, there had to be one that made absolute sense. There had to be one that would save her little boy. Laura didn’t want to offend her son, scare him off, do anything to break the bond they’d somehow managed to forge in that moment of crisis. Parker needed his mother more than ever. She felt that she’d failed him in the past. She owed him the help that he needed.

“Was Tori your girlfriend?” The words were delivered as flatly as possible. Laura Connelly used all that she possessed to try to keep the tone of judgment out of her words. To judge him was to push him away. To push him away at that moment would be to lose him forever.

“Mom! I told you, she’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father. I’m going to be a better dad than Dad ever was.” She patted him gently. The touch of his heaving body scared her. He was going to disintegrate.

“I have no doubt,” she said, softly, but with all the conviction of someone desperate to keep her son safe. No matter what he did. Parker fixed his stare on his mother.

“She lied to me, Mom. She lied to me. She wasn’t going to be with me. She was going to take our baby and