Secrets and sin, p.13
Secrets and Sin, page 13
“I have but not as much as you guys seem to think. Besides, they’re human, just like the rest of us.”
“Says the guy that’s boned one,” Ethan laughed. “C’mon, we’re all old and married. Give us some details so we can live vicariously through you.”
Zack sure as hell didn’t want to discuss his sex life. The only good thing about the turn the conversation had taken was they’d stopped asking him about Lucy.
“Do you think that there will be a memorial service?” he asked, trying to change the subject.
Five grins instantly fell, and an awkward tension dropped over the table. Not the same kind he’d experienced with Joel less than an hour ago, but it still felt off. Everyone had been happy and laughing, and then it was gone in an instant.
“Uh yeah, sure,” Leo said with a shrug. “They probably will. I’ll go if I can get off work.”
“I don’t think I’ll make it,” Jay said. “But I’ll send flowers or something.”
The other men nodded, their gazes on the table, the wall, or anywhere but at Zack or each other.
“It was a shock to find her,” Zack said. “I guess I always thought that she ran away.”
“We all did,” Dave piped up. “Sarah and her stepdad were always arguing. I assumed she’d had enough and just left.”
“It made sense,” Leo agreed. “I never thought…you know.”
“Did your dad and stepmom leave on their honeymoon today?” Ethan asked. “They were going on a cruise or something like that. Or was it Hawaii?”
That veered the conversation to vacations and the pros and cons of beaches over other destinations. It appeared that the group was determined that they weren’t going to talk about Sarah.
Eventually, they all needed to go, and one by one they all exited the tavern, leaving just Jay and Zack.
“I should be getting back to my folks’ house,” Jay said. “I said I would grill hamburgers for dinner. I don’t visit as much as I should, so I want to make sure I spend as much time with my family as I can on this trip.”
“It was good to catch up,” Zack replied, taking the last drink of his beer. “This has been an interesting visit home.”
“I bet,” Jay said, clearing his throat before continuing. “It’s probably pretty boring compared to your life in the city.”
“I don’t know about that. A lot has happened here, after all. Sarah being found is a big one.”
Zack didn’t mention that it had spurred him and his siblings to hire their own investigator as well.
Jay rubbed at his chin, clearly wanting to say something but not doing it.
“You all seem very uncomfortable when I bring Sarah up in conversation. She was our friend, but no one seems to think that her being found is a positive thing.”
“You should just let this go,” Jay sighed. “Go back to New York and forget all about this. Sarah has been gone for years, and we’ve all processed and dealt with it. You seem to want to re-litigate the past but none of us have the stomach for that. We can’t change anything. It’s over and done.”
“I just said that I thought that she ran off. I’m not trying to change the past.”
“Listen, I don’t want to go into this but let’s just say that Sarah wasn’t as innocent and naive as a lot of people seemed to think. You might have been surprised when she disappeared, but a lot of us weren’t. She had some stuff going on.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just stuff. I was raised that we don’t talk smack about someone that’s passed on, and I’m going to stick to that. I’m just saying that what she showed everyone at school wasn’t always the real Sarah, okay? I’m not saying she deserved what she got or anything like that. I don’t victim-blame. But they say every teenager has a secret life of sorts. Sarah wasn’t any exception.”
Jay shoved back his chair and levered to his feet before reaching into his pocket. Zack shook his head and picked up the bill that had been left earlier.
“I’ve got this. I think I get the family discount.”
Jay chuckled and nodded, tossing a twenty on the table.
“I bet you do. That’s cool, but I’ll leave a tip for the server. Hey, it was good to see you, man. Don’t be a stranger from now on. This was fun. It would be nice to do it more often.”
As weird as it had felt, Zack didn’t want to let go of the past either.
“I promise,” he said. “We’ll do it again.”
Maybe Jay was right. Zack couldn’t pretend to know Sarah’s life. While they’d been “friends”, they hadn’t confided in each other or anything. They’d run in the same big crowd, but that didn’t mean they were close. It simply meant that they went to the same parties.
He had more than enough unanswered questions regarding his own mother’s disappearance. He didn’t need to borrow more. It would be best if he just stepped back and let Finn worry about it.
In a few days, he’d probably be gone.
13
“I’ve never been to this place,” Zack said. “But it smells good.”
Lucy and Zack were going to have dinner at one of the local Italian restaurants in the downtown area. It was one of her favorite eateries, and she was excited to share it with him.
“It opened a few years ago,” she replied as they were seated at a table near the front window. “I recommend the chicken parmesan and the lasagna. Both are awesome. And save room for dessert. You’re not going to want to miss the tiramisu.”
If Zack didn’t like a woman with a hearty appetite, he wasn’t going to like her. Lucy enjoyed her food with gusto. She didn’t live to eat, but a good meal was something to be savored.
A server brought them their drinks and took their order before disappearing into the kitchen in the back. From the moment they’d met up tonight, Lucy had noticed an uneasiness with Zack. There was a tension that hadn’t been there this morning. A part of her was saying to leave it alone, but a bigger part was telling her to at least ask about it. He just might want or need to talk.
“You seem…pensive. I’m not sure that’s the right word, but you have something on your mind. Do you want to talk about it? If not, I’ll drop the subject. I just wanted you to know that the offer was out there.”
“I do have something on my mind,” Zack admitted, playing with the fork on the table, his gaze somewhere else.
“You don’t have to—”
“I do want to talk about it,” he replied quickly. “It’s been quite a day in a weird way. Not much happened but for some reason I feel exhausted.”
“Finding Sarah has to have brought up a lot of emotions in you. I think that’s only natural.”
“I suppose it is,” he said, slowly nodding in agreement. “I met Cooper and Piper for lunch. They want to hire our own private investigator to look into Mom’s disappearance. I agree that I think we should. Apparently, news got around fast. I’m not sure how, but is anything a secret in this town? My dad showed up at the apartment for the first time ever, according to Cooper, to try and talk us out of it. He said it was a terrible idea, and that we’d all end up getting hurt. He’s just trying to protect us, you see.”
Lucy didn’t dislike Joel Winslow, but she wasn’t his biggest fan either. To be honest, she didn’t quite trust him after everything that had happened with his wife. He’d been questioned at the time as a suspect, but nothing more had ever come of it. She was all about guilty until proven innocent, but even his own kids didn’t believe him.
“He came to see you? That’s…shocking. Cooper has said several times that his dad has never come to see him since he moved back to town. He’s always trying to get Cooper to come to the house or the office.”
“That’s Dad’s power play,” Zack explained. “He likes to have the upper hand in any sort of dealings, and he equates his children with his business rivals. He wants to be sitting behind the big oak desk or standing in his huge mansion. Because everything to him is about winning and losing. Nothing else exists.”
“That sounds like a sad way to live.”
“It is,” Zack agreed readily. “He came to the apartment, tried to convince us that we were on the road to heartache and betrayal, and that we’ll all just end up crying in the corner when the investigator doesn’t find anything. Dad says there are no new trails to follow, and that we’re wasting time and money. Yes, he mentioned money. Then he poked at Cooper for not having any. I told him that I’d pay for it happily, and that we were all adults who could decide what was a waste and what wasn’t. He insists that he knows best which isn’t a surprise at all. No one can convince him he’s wrong about anything. Can you imagine living like that? Thinking you’re right about everything in the universe, and everyone else are just idiots crowding up your world?”
“I’ve met a few people like that back in corporate America when I lived in California. It was their world. We were just living in it. I think they call it main character syndrome.”
“He’s definitely the hero in his own movie,” Zack laughed. “I should ask him who would play him if it were ever made. Probably DeNiro.”
“Who would play you?”
“I don’t know,” he teased. “Who do you think should play me?”
“Hmmm,” she said, tapping her chin. “How about a younger George Clooney?”
“He’s probably a little too suave and debonair, but I like the way you think.”
“What did you end up deciding?” she asked. “Are you hiring someone?”
“We are. Cooper is handling it. He’s called an agency in Chicago. We’re hoping to meet them in a few days to talk about first steps. I’ve also sent Finn a message to let him know, but I haven’t heard back yet. I’m sure the investigator will want to talk to the police and I didn’t want him to be blindsided, especially when he’s in the middle of Sarah’s case.”
“Speaking of Sarah,” Lucy said as their dinners were placed in front of them. “Mr. Hayes came into the bookstore today. You remember him from English class?”
“I do. I think I might have sent him into early retirement. I never could understand Shakespeare for the life of me. I’m still confused, although it hasn’t hampered me in any way out in the real world.”
“I doubt you were the first,” Lucy replied, taking a bite of her chicken. Amazing. “He and I talked about Sarah for a few minutes. He said that he’d heard she went to a campus bar where you could go in underage and drink. I told him some friends and I had tried that and were turned away immediately. Did you know anything about a place like that?”
“I heard those stories, too,” Zack said with a groan. “The bar was owned by a friend of my dad’s, so of course, I never went to test the theory that I might get in. But I did hear several people saying that they did go and drink. I don’t know if it was true or not. It could have been the truth, or it could have been boasting in the locker room. The guys that said they did it seemed persuasive, though. A few guys tried to get me to do it, but I didn’t want any more issues with my father than I already had. Besides, we could just go out in the country to drink. We didn’t need to do it in a bar.”
“You didn’t want to meet cute college girls?”
“I did, but I seriously doubt they would have looked twice at me.”
Lucy had a feeling that Zack underestimated just how good-looking he was.
“I didn’t know anyone personally that got in, but there were always rumors about it,” she said.
“This lasagna is delicious, by the way. We can come here anytime you want.”
Would he be around in the future? He’d made it sound like there would be more dinners, and that made her happy. Too happy, to be honest. She shouldn’t be counting on him. Not yet, anyway. They hadn’t talked about what happened tomorrow, in a few days, or even a few weeks. His life was up in the air and she didn’t want to push, but at some point, they’d need to address it.
“I’m glad you like it. This is one of my favorite places. I probably come here too much. I should lay off the carbs.”
His gaze was hot as it swept from her toes to the top of her head.
“I think the carbs are treating you right.”
She could feel the heat in her cheeks, and suddenly wished that they’d ordered their dinner for takeout. Then she could drag him into the bedroom and do all sorts of debauched things to him. As it was, she’d have to wait until they were done eating.
“How was your reunion with your friends this afternoon?” Lucy asked as their plates were being cleared. “Did you have fun? Was it like old times?”
“It was fun, but it did not feel like old times at all. It felt a bit strange and awkward. I sat there wondering what we all had in common now, and what we had in common back then.”
“We were all kids in a small town. That’s what we had in common.”
“I guess you’re right,” Zack laughed. “It was just a strange hour and a half out of my life. At one point, I brought up Sarah, and you’d have thought that I spit in the food. It was like everything came to a halt, and no one wanted to be there. They changed the subject immediately, and I got the vibe that they didn’t want to talk about it. A fact that my friend Jay confirmed later when everyone was leaving. He told me that I should just drop it, and that Sarah wasn’t as innocent as she seemed.”
“That’s a strange thing to say,” Lucy observed. “What did he mean by that?”
“He said that they’d all processed it and moved on, and I should, too. He said that Sarah didn’t show her true self to people, and that they weren’t all that surprised when she disappeared.”
“That’s even more bizarre. Was he implying that she was into drugs or something? But that does sort of go along with what Mr. Hayes said. He heard from another teacher that Sarah had some stuff going on in her life, and she wasn’t going to buckle down and study so he shouldn’t bother trying to get her to.”
“Did you ever hear anything about Sarah?” he asked.
In a town full of gossip, it would have been harder not to hear anything. Not just Sarah but anyone.
“No. Well, kind of. I’d heard that she and her stepdad were at odds, and that they argued all the time. That her home life wasn’t all that great. I also heard that she and Ethan fought all the time, and that they were cheating on each other. I just thought it was the typical drama back then. But I was also a year younger than you, so I wasn’t privy to as much. What did you hear?”
“Pretty much what you did although I know for a fact that Ethan cheated on Sarah. He said she was cheating on him, and at the time I didn’t have any reason not to believe him.”
“I wouldn’t hold up most high school relationships as healthy. There was a hell of a lot of dysfunction.”
“True,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t call my teenage relationships good examples of communication, that’s for sure.”
“Did you and Angel argue a lot?”
Lucy could have bitten off her tongue. Why on earth had she brought that subject up?
“Like cats and dogs. I thought it was normal for a long time. It didn’t help that my dad was always encouraging me to keep dating her. When I finally broke up with her he got mad, and I told him that he should ask her out if he liked her so much. He kept bringing her up every damn time I came home during college until she got married. I don’t know what it was about her, but he kept pushing until he couldn’t anymore.”
Lucy opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. Zack didn’t need her amateur psychology opinion. She wasn’t a doctor, and she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You look like you want to say something. It’s okay if you do.”
“It was stupid. I don’t know anything about the situation. I’ve just read a bunch of books, and that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Still, I’d like to hear your opinion. The fact that you admit that you’re a bystander makes me want to hear it more. An unbiased person might see things that I don’t.”
“Fine,” she replied, placing her napkin on the table. She wanted to tread lightly here. “But I need to tell you a very short story before I give my opinion. It’s about my uncle. He’s my mom’s older brother. He’s an okay guy but he has this thing about everything being his idea, and that idea is the best one ever. No one’s ideas could possibly be as good. Like he’d buy a certain make of car, and he’d try to press my mom and dad into getting the same exact one. He’d go on vacation and the destination was the best and everyone should go. Stuff like that. What it really all came down to was control and validation. He wanted to control what people chose, and he craved validation for his own choices.”
“You think that’s what my dad is doing?”
She did. Wholeheartedly, but she couldn’t be sure. The dynamics of the Winslow family were obviously complex. It might take a lifetime to tease it all out.
“You said that your dad wanted to pick your friends, your college, your sports, your career. It would seem that he wanted to pick your girlfriend, too. I doubt it had anything to do with Angel specifically, it was just that he wanted you to do what he wanted you to. And then when you did, it would validate his choice. Next time you didn’t want to do what he wanted, he could point back to Angel and say, ‘See? I was right. That’s why you should do this, too.’”
“It makes sense,” Zack agreed. “I’ll admit that I stopped worrying about what my dad thought a long time ago. At this point, I don’t really care. That might make me a bad son.”
“I think it just makes you an independent one.”
Zack’s phone lit up and vibrated on the table.
“It’s Finn. I guess he got my message. Do you mind if I take this? I’ll step outside. I won’t be long.”
“Of course, go ahead.”
Zack hurried out of the restaurant, and Lucy stayed at the table still thinking about what he had said about Sarah. Plus Mr. Hayes. Had Sarah been into something dangerous? Lucy hadn’t known the other girl well to be able to say either way. No matter what had happened all those years ago, it was still tragic.
