She tried to breathe, her lungs tight. She nodded slowly, gathering her thoughts, but it was like pulling clouds out of the sky.
“My mom is dying,” Gary’s son continued harshly.
“What’s your name?”
He stared at her. She repeated the question.
“Scott.”
“Okay. Scott.” She nodded, licked her lips. “I know about your mom.”
“Then why did you fire him?” he burst out, the gun wavering. Keara tensed. He could shoot her even accidentally if he wasn’t in control of that thing.
“I didn’t know about your mom then,” she said quietly. “I found out the day he…”
“He tried to rob the bank,” Scott sneered. “You drove him to that. Drove him crazy. And then they shot him.”
“Do you…do you know what happened in there?” she asked, leaning forward a bit.
“I know he talked to Mom. I know he was coming out. The cops told me he was going to give himself up, but I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t give in. We needed the money.”
“You think what he did was right?” She kept her voice soft.
He slashed the air with his hand. “That doesn’t matter. He was doing what he thought he had to.”
Gary’s son clearly had inherited his faulty reasoning skills. Or maybe they managed to convince themselves what they did was right. Keara wasn’t sure, but it was very sad that Scott had been driven beyond rational thought just like his father had.
She took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you what happened in there. When it was just your dad and me. I told the police, but I guess they didn’t tell you everything. I’ll tell you, if you’ll put the gun down and listen.”
He glared at her for a long moment while he weighed things. “I’ll put the gun down,” he said finally, laying it on the wide arm of the chair. “But it stays right here with me. So don’t try anything.”
“I won’t. I just want to talk.”
“Fine. Go ahead. But don’t think you’re going to make any difference. You deserve to die just like my dad did.”
The way he said it, the way it sounded rehearsed, the lack of conviction in his words, made her relax minutely. It made her think he wasn’t really a killer. Just like his dad had had no intention of killing her. They were desperate but they weren’t murderers. She didn’t know what Scott thought he was going to accomplish by doing this, other than scaring the bejesus out of her, but she didn’t believe he was actually going to kill her.
Of course, a gun sitting right there still made her nervous.
“This is what happened.”
Keara paused in her story. Scott listened intently, although he stared across the room and not at her.
“Scott. I have to be honest with you.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I don’t know if knowing about your mom would have changed the decision I had to make to let your dad go. I don’t know if it would have. I had to make business decisions. But I’d like to think that if I’d known, I would have done more to make sure your mom was looked after. I would have talked to your dad about options. Before that happened.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. And I will always regret that. You have no idea how sorry I am that I didn’t take more time to get to know your dad and what was going on his life.” She pleaded for understanding with her eyes. He looked away.
He sat there, silent, staring into space, shoulders slumped. She sat up a bit straighter and her fingers gripped her knees. What was he going to do?
Then he turned his eyes to her. “Is that really what happened?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“He told you to leave and you wouldn’t go without him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She rolled her bottom lip in and let it slowly slide through her teeth as she pondered what to say to him. But Scott answered for her.
“He was going to kill himself, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know for sure,” she said after a short pause.
Scott shook his head. “He was. You did know it. And you didn’t want to leave him there to do that.”
His image blurred as her eyes filled with tears and her chest constricted. “I wanted to help him,” she whispered. “Like I should have before I let him go.” A sob escaped her lips and she covered her mouth with shaking hands.
“So you were trying to save him,” Scott said slowly. His shoulders slumped even more. “And then the cops shot him.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” She twisted her fingers together and leaned forward again. “They told me after. One of the SWAT team just got overeager, or something. Adrenaline apparently can do that. They thought he was still going to kill me. But the guy in charge kept telling them not to shoot. He knew. I knew. Your dad wasn’t going to kill me. And…” she paused, “I made sure our insurance company paid out your dad’s death benefits. They weren’t going to. They thought he’d been trying to commit suicide.”
“Suicide by cop.”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “I told them he wasn’t. The money’s being used to look after your mom.”
Scott bowed his head. A hard shudder racked her body and she bent over her knees at the emotion that swamped her. She covered her face with her hands and choked on another sob.
She had tried to save Gary. And it wasn’t all her fault.
She cried. Scott was sitting there with a gun right by his hand, and all she could do was cry.
She cried for Gary. He’d been so desperate and yes, part of that was her responsibility, and she’d do anything to go back in time and change how she’d handled that, but she didn’t make him rob the bank. That was his choice.
She cried for Scott, for the sadness and desperation and vengeance
