Love You More

“I figured she’d be okay. And my father… by then, he was a wreck. If he couldn’t accept Tommy had ever assaulted other women, how could he believe what Tommy had done to me? It seemed better to just keep my mouth shut. Except… the longer you go without speaking, the harder it becomes. I wanted to see Tessa, but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted my parents to know what happened, but I didn’t know how to tell them.

“I stopped speaking. Literally. For an entire year. And my parents never even noticed. They were too busy with their own nervous breakdowns to bother with mine. Then Tessa disappeared-I heard her father had kicked her out. She never told me. Never stopped by to say goodbye. Maybe she couldn’t speak either. I never knew. Until you showed up yesterday morning, I didn’t know she’d become a cop, I didn’t know she’d gotten married, and I didn’t know she had a little girl named Sophie. That’s my middle name, you know. She named her daughter for me. After everything I did to her, she still named her daughter for me…”

“The daughter who’s now dead,” D.D. said bluntly.

“You’re wrong!” Juliana shook her head.

“You’re wrong, Juliana: We saw the body. Or at least the pieces after she blew it up.”

Juliana paled, then shook her head again. “You’re wrong,” the young woman insisted stubbornly.

“Once again, from the woman whose family could give lessons in denial…”

“You don’t know Tessa.”

“For the past ten years, neither have you.”

“She’s clever. Self-sufficient. But she wouldn’t harm a child, not after what happened to her brother.”

Bobby and D.D. exchanged glances. “Brother?” D.D. said.

“Stillborn baby. That’s what tore her family apart, years before I knew her. Her mother fell into a deep depression, probably should’ve been institutionalized, except what did people know back then? Her mom lived in the bedroom. Never came out, certainly never cared for Tessa. Her father did the best he could, but he was not exactly nurturing. But Tessa loved them. She tried to take care of them, in her own way. And she loved her baby brother, too. One day, we had a funeral for him, just she and I. And she cried, she truly cried, because that’s the one thing in her house you were never allowed to do.”

D.D. stared at Juliana. “You know, you could’ve told me this sooner.”

“Well, you could’ve figured it out sooner. Cops. Must the victims do all the work for you?”

D.D. bristled. Bobby promptly placed a settling hand on her arm.

“Where did you take her?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Juliana said primly.

“You picked Tessa up. You already admitted that.”

“No. I did not. Your partner stated I picked her up. I never said any such thing.”

D.D. ground her teeth. “So that’s the way you want to play it?” She swept her arm across the toy-strewn floor. “We can take you down to HQ. Seize your car. We’ll tear it apart while you rot behind bars. How old’s your kid again? Because I don’t know if babies are even allowed to visit prison.”

“Tessa called me Monday evening shortly after nine p.m.,” Juliana stated defiantly. “She said, what are friends for? I said, Tessa? Because I was surprised to hear her voice after all these years. She said she wanted to call me again. Then she hung up. That’s what we said, and the only interaction I have had in the past ten years with Tessa Leoni. If you want to know why she called, what she meant, or if she intended any further contact, you’ll have to ask her.”

D.D. was flabbergasted, honestly flabbergasted. Who knew Tessa’s suburbanite playmate had it in her?

“One hair in your car, and you’re screwed,” D.D. said.

Juliana made a show of slapping her cheeks. “OhmyGod, so sorry. Did I mention that I vacuumed? Oh, and just the other day, I read the best trick for washing your car. It involves ammonia…”

D.D. stared at the housewife. “I’m going to arrest you for that alone,” she said finally.

“Then do it.”

“Tessa shot her husband. She dragged his body down into the garage, and she buried it in snow,” D.D. snapped angrily. “Tessa killed her daughter, drove her body out to the woods, and rigged it with enough explosives to take out the recovery team. This is the woman you’re trying to protect.”

“This is the woman you thought killed my brother,” Juliana corrected. “You were wrong about that. Not so hard to believe you’re wrong about the rest of it, too.”

“We are not wrong-” D.D. started, but then she stopped. She frowned. Something occurred to her, the niggling doubt from earlier in the woods. Oh, crap.

“I’ve gotta make a phone call,” she said abruptly. “You. Sit. Take even one step from that sofa and I’ll arrest your sorry ass.”

Then she nodded at Bobby and led him to the front porch, where she whipped out her cellphone.

“What-” he started, but she held up a silencing hand.

“Medical examiner’s office?” she spoke into the receiver. “Get Ben. I know he’s working. What the hell do you think I’m calling about? Tell him it’s Sergeant Warren, because I bet you a hundred bucks he’s standing over a microscope right now, thinking Oh shit.”

34

My father’s garage had never been very impressive, and ten years hadn’t improved it any. A squat, cinder-block building, the exterior paint was the color of nicotine and peeling off in giant flakes. Heating had always been unreliable; in the winter, my father would work under cars in full snow gear. Plumbing wasn’t any better. Once upon a time, there’d been a working toilet. Mostly, my father and his male friends peed on the fence line-men, marking turf.

Two advantages of my father’s shop, however: first, a bullpen of used cars awaiting repair and resell; second, an acetylene torch, perfect for cutting through metal and, coincidentally, melting cellphones.

The heavy front door was locked. Ditto with the garage bay. Back door, however, was open. I followed the glow of the bare bulb to the rear of the garage, where my father sat on a stool, smoking a cigarette and watching my approach.

A half-empty bottle of Jack sat on the workbench behind him. It’d taken me years to realize the full extent of my father’s drinking. That we didn’t go to bed by nine p.m. just because my father got up so early in the morning, but because he was too drunk to continue on with his day.

When I gave birth to Sophie, I’d hoped it would help me understand my parents and their endless grief. But it didn’t. Even mourning the loss of an infant, how could they fail to feel the love of their remaining child? How could they simply stop seeing me?

My father inhaled one last time, then stubbed out his cigarette. He didn’t use an ashtray; his scarred workbench got the job done.

“Knew you’d come,” he said, speaking with the rasp of a lifetime smoker. “News just announced your escape. Figured you’d head here.”

So Sergeant Warren had copped to her mistake. Good for her.

I ignored my father, heading for the acetylene torch.

My father was still dressed in his oil-stained coveralls. Even from this distance I could tell his shoulders remained broad, his chest thickly muscled. Spending all day with your arms working above your head will do that to a man.

If he wanted to stop me, he had brute strength on his side.

The realization made my hands tremble as I arrived at the twin tanks of the acetylene torch. I took the safety goggles down from their nearby hook and set about prepping for business. I wore the dark gloves Juliana had supplied for me. I had to take them off long enough to dismantle the cellphone-slide off the cover, remove the battery.

Then I slipped the black gloves back on, topping them with a heavy-duty pair of work gloves. I set the duffel bag next to the wall, then placed the cellphone in the middle of the cement floor, the best surface when working with a torch that can cut through steel like a knife through butter.