could see laundry flapping in the breeze on the line in the side yard. It was still a depressing scene. Her past was eroding away before her eyes, like sludge off a mountaintop.
Hazel Rose had always been kind to Michelle. Even when the little girl stopped going over there for the tea parties she gave for neighborhood kids. Why that memory had slipped into her mind just now, Michelle didn't know. She turned back to the house, knowing what she had to do, even if she didn't want to do it.
Michelle's hunch had been right. Her father's car was parked in front of hers. The front door to the farmhouse was open. She walked past his car and then by the stunted remains of the rose hedge.
That's what it was, she now recalled. A rose hedge. Why had that popped into her head? And then she remembered the lilies on her mother's coffin and telling Sean that her mom preferred roses. And she had felt a pain in her hand, like a thorn had pricked her. But there was no thorn, because there were no roses. Just like now. No roses.
She walked on, wondering what she would say to him.
She didn't have long to think.
'I'm up here,' his voice called out to her. She gazed up, using her hand to shield her eyes against the sun. He was standing at an open window on the second floor.
She stepped over the fallen screen door and walked inside a house she had called home for a brief time when she was a child. In a way she felt like she was traveling back in time. With each step she was growing younger, less confident, and less competent. All her years of living, her experiences in college, in the Secret Service, as Sean's partner, were dissolving away. She was six years old again, dragging a battered plastic baseball bat around, looking for someone to play with.
She eyed the old stairs. She had slid down them on flattened cardboard when she was a kid. Something her mother didn't really like, but she remembered her father laughing and catching her as she hurtled down.
'My youngest son,' he sometimes called her because she had been such a fearless tomboy.
She headed up. Her father met her on the landing.
'I thought you might come here,' he said.
'Why?'
'Unfinished business, maybe.'
She opened the door to her old room, walked over to the window, and sat on the edge of the sill, her back to the filthy glass panes.
Her father leaned up against the wall and put his hands in his pockets, idly stabbing the scuffed wooden floor with his shoe. 'Do you remember much about this place?' he asked, his gaze fixed on his shoe.
'I remembered the rose hedge when I was walking up to the house. You planted that for an anniversary, didn't you?'
'No, your mother's birthday.'
'And somebody chopped it all down one night.'
'Yes, they did.'
Michelle turned to look out the window. 'Never found out who.'
'I miss her. I really miss her.'
She turned back to find her father watching her. 'I know. I've never seen you cry like you did the other morning.'
'I was crying because I almost lost you, baby.'
This answer surprised Michelle and then she wondered why it had.
'I know that Mom loved you, Dad. Even if she… if she didn't always show it exactly the right way.'
'Let's go outside, getting sort of stuffy in here.'
They walked along the perimeter of the backyard. 'Your mother and I were high school sweethearts. She waited for me while I was in Vietnam. We got married. Then the kids started coming.'
'Four boys. All in four years. Talk about your rabbits.'
'And then my little girl came along.'
She smiled and poked him in the arm. 'Can we say accident?'
'No, Michelle, it was no accident. We planned for you.'
She looked at him quizzically. 'I guess I never really asked either of you about it, but I always assumed I was sort of a surprise. Was it because you were trying for a girl?'
Frank stopped walking. 'We were trying for… something.'
'Something to hold you together?' she said slowly.
He started to walk again but she didn't. He stopped, looked back.
'Did you ever consider divorce, Dad?'
'It was not something our generation did lightly.'
'Divorce is not always the wrong answer. If you weren't happy.'
Frank held up a hand. 'Your mother wasn't happy. I, uh, I was trying to work at it. Although I'd be the first to admit that I spent too much time on the job and away from her. She raised the kids and she did a great job. But she did it without a lot of support from me.'
'Cop's life.'
'No, just this cop's life.'
'You knew about Doug Reagan, obviously?'
'I saw some of the signs that she was attracted to him.'
Michelle couldn't believe she was about to ask this, but she had to. 'Would it have bothered you if you knew they had slept together?'
'I was still her husband. Of course it would have hurt me, deeply.'
'Would you have put a stop to it?'
'I probably would've beaten Reagan within an inch of his life.'
'And Mom?'
'I hurt your mother in other ways over the years. And it wasn't her fault.'
'By not being around for her?'
'In some ways, that's worse than cheating.'
'You think so?'
'What's a quick fling in the sack compared to decades of indifference?'
'Dad, you weren't gone all the time.'
'You weren't alive when the boys were little. Trust me, your mother was a single parent for all intents and purposes. You can never get that time, that trust back. At least I never did.'
'Did you cry for her too?'
He held out his hand for her to take. She did.
'You cry, sweetie. You always cry.'
'I don't want to stay here.'
'Let's go.'
Michelle had nearly made it to her SUV when it happened. Without any warning at all, her feet pointed toward the house and she started to run.
'Michelle!' her father screamed.
She was already inside the old building and racing up the stairs. Feet pounded after her. She took the steps two at a time, her breaths coming in gasps, as though she had run miles instead of yards.
She reached the top. The door to her bedroom was closed. But that was not her destination. She raced to the door at the end of the hall and kicked it open.
'Michelle, no!' her father roared from behind her.
She stared into the room. Her hand went to her gun. She flicked off the cover strap. The Sig was out, pointed straight ahead.
'Michelle!' Feet pounded closer.
'Get away from my mom!' she screamed.
In Michelle's mind her mother looked back at her, terrified. She was on her knees, her dress half torn off. Michelle could see her mother's bra, the indentation of her heavy cleavage, and this exposure terrified her.
'Baby!' Sally Maxwell yelled out to her. 'Go back downstairs.' Her mother was young, young and alive. Long
