Uncle Gavin picks up a tablet that sits on a stack of invoices on the corner of his desk and holds it so I can see the screen. It shows four different video feeds, including the service door entrance and the hallway outside his office door. When he’s sure I’ve seen it, he puts the tablet down again. “I’m quite happy with Caesar’s security,” he says. “What’s on your mind?”
His matter-of-factness is infuriating. I want to sweep everything off his desk and onto the floor, then maybe overturn the desk for good measure, never mind that the desk is massive enough to take four people just to move it. For a moment I stand there, clenching and unclenching my fists.
Uncle Gavin pulls open a drawer and retrieves a bottle of whiskey and two glasses, then shoves a stack of file folders to one side so he can put the glasses down on his desk.
“I don’t want a drink,” I say.
He pours one glass, then another. “You need one.”
“No thanks.”
He holds a glass out to me. “It’s a twelve-year-old peated single malt from Ireland. Be civil.”
I take the glass and drink, the whiskey smooth and smoky with a touch of raw heat at the back of my throat. I take another sip and sit down. “There. Civil.”
Uncle Gavin hmphs and drinks from his glass, setting it down on his desk. “Is Susannah all right?” he asks.
I laugh, a sad, ugly sound. “No,” I say, “she’s not all right. You know that.” I finish my glass in one go and put it down on the desk.
As usual, my uncle’s face is unreadable. “Talk sense,” he says.
“Sense?” I shake my head. “Okay, here’s ‘sense.’ Susannah killed Marisa.”
Uncle Gavin sits back in his chair. “Donny Wharton killed Marisa,” he says.
I rest my face in my hands, suddenly exhausted. “My sister did it,” I say. “I know she did it.”
Uncle Gavin’s chair creaks as he shifts in it. “Your sister was in the hospital when Marisa died,” he says.
“Then she got out somehow,” I say, annoyed. “It’s not like she didn’t have the motive. Marisa slept with her to get back at me. You know how Susannah would react to being used like that. She got out of the hospital and found Marisa and killed her.” I look up at my uncle. “And then she called you to help her.”
Uncle Gavin says nothing but takes another swallow from his glass, looking past me at some spot in the near distance only he can see. I wait.
“She was never in the hospital,” Uncle Gavin says. “At Northside.”
I frown. “I dropped her off. I saw her walk inside and talk to the nurse.” Then understanding hits me, and I collapse back in my chair like a sigh. “She never actually got admitted, did she?”
“She told the nurse you were an abusive boyfriend and she was trying to get away,” my uncle said. “The nurse let her walk in and then walk right out the back door.” He finishes his glass, pours himself another, then raises an eyebrow at me. Wearily I nod, and he refills my glass. We sit sipping whiskey. It’s excellent, but the warm glow forming in the pit of my stomach is doing nothing to make me feel better.
“Your sister,” my uncle says, and then he sighs. “Do you remember when I told you about those two men in Jacksonville? One of them was the man who fought with your father that night. Bridges, the one at the monastery.”
I nod. “You brought me a newspaper article. Bridges and Gardner were arrested for drug trafficking.”
“You threw it away. The article.”
I shrug. “I guess so.”
“Your sister took it out of the trash and kept it,” he says.
I can’t think of a response at first and just stare at my uncle instead. Someone down in the kitchen is shouting about an order for a table of twelve. “Why?” I ask finally.
“She came to me,” my uncle says, “when she was about to graduate from high school. You were in college. She showed me the article and asked me if I knew where those men were. I told her they were still in prison. Then she asked me if I knew where the man you called Ponytail was.”
My heart feels as if it’s pounding in my throat. “Did you?” I ask.
He sips his whiskey again. “I had an idea,” he says. “Susannah wanted to find him. I told her no, tried to talk her out of it. She … wasn’t persuaded.” He gives me a faint smile. “She told me she would go look for him with or without my help.” He shrugs. “I thought she might be safer if I helped her.”
I stared at him. “What are you saying? That she was … on some sort of vendetta?”
“She blames herself for what happened to you and your parents,” he says. “You went running down the hall to give your father his pistol. She was angry with you, thought you were dismissing her. So she tripped you.”
I’m running down the hall, the gun in my hand, my father and Bridges struggling, my mother and Kayla crying out. Susannah scowls at me from her doorway. She sticks out her foot. I trip and fall, the gun in my hand going off. And then Ponytail comes in with a hand cannon and shoots, and there’s blood and screams. I shut my eyes and raise my hand as if to blot the memory out. “It’s … she didn’t—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Uncle Gavin says. “She thinks it was her fault. That’s her perception, so that’s her reality. And she was going to do what she could to make it right.”
I open my eyes and look at my uncle, horrified. “Are you saying that for the past few years, she was looking for Donny Wharton?”
“She was looking for justice,” my uncle says. “Or whatever version of it she could find.”
Nashville, Susannah told me when I asked where she had
