His Perfect Family. Patti Standard
Lisa nodded. “Okay.” She twisted her chair back to face the computer screen, and her fingers began to move again, holding on to the mouse like a lifelike.
He paused on the way downstairs. The house was arranged so he could stand out of sight on the stairs yet still hear every word coming from the kitchen.
Blanche was saying, “This is going to be so hard—raising Lisa by yourself. At least you were out of high school before your father died. I don’t know what I would have done without him all those years when you were growing up.”
“I don’t remember him being a very involved parent,” Adrianne said dryly.
Blanche immediately protested. “Maybe not in the touchy-feely way men are supposed to behave today, but he always provided for us. He was a good man. A good father.”
A drawer was shoved in place, a sharp crack of wood slamming against wood. “He was a drunk.”
There was a long silence, and Cutter shifted uneasily on the stairs.
“Well, I’m going to be late for supper if I don’t get going.” Blanche’s voice was crisp and businesslike. “I don’t want to keep Samuel waiting. We do a lot of work with his title company.”
“All right, Mother.” Adrianne sounded resigned, as if she’d expected Blanche’s nonresponse. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Cutter made a show of coming down the remaining stairs, turning the corner into the kitchen just as Blanche headed toward the front door.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Munro.”
She nodded and smiled pleasantly, her heels clicking briskly across the vinyl entryway. Lord, that was one tough cookie, he thought as she let herself out. A drunken husband, an embezzling son-in-law, yet not a hair out of place. Reality wasn’t going to come along and mess up her plans. No sir.
Adrianne was another matter. She stood at the counter, a knife poised over the now frosted cake. Yet she made no move. Her back was stiff with tension, and as he came quietly up behind her, he could see her knuckles were white around the metal handle.
He reached out and laid a hand on the back of her neck. Little wisps trailed from the knot of hair on top of her head and curled over his fingers. Internal alarms rang a warning, told him to back off, hands to himself. But her skin was soft, smooth and warm, and he told himself this was all part of the job, gaining her trust, working the mark. “What is it?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, soothing.
For a moment, it seemed as if she pressed back, toward the contact, but then she shifted imperceptibly away, and he dropped his hand.
“It’s nothing, really.” She sliced into the cake. “It’s just Mother and I have such different memories of some things. It’s weird. I was there, she was there, yet it’s like we were in one of those Star Trek parallel universes or something....” She gave a little allover shake. “Anyway, why don’t you have a piece of cake with me? Comfort food.” She reached into the cupboard above her head and took down two plates. “We can spoil our appetites together.”
He took the plate she handed him with a huge piece of chocolate cake leaning in the center, and sat down at the table. If she knew anything about the money, he had to take advantage of these opportunities to talk with her. But if she was going to ply him with food every time, he’d be loosening his tool belt a notch by the time he found it. And he damn well better start thinking with what was above that belt, not below it.
Adrianne sat across from him and picked up her fork. She poked absently at the frosting with the tines, marring its smooth surface with four evenly spaced creases. “I guess you’re wondering what that was all about—with Lisa, I mean.”
“It’s really none of my business. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Tell ’em not to talk, and most people couldn’t wait to start. He tried to ignore the guilty twinge in his gut as she raised those fragile, golden brown eyes to his.
“It’s all blown over now, thank God,” she said. “It seems one of Harvey’s clients had some money siphoned from an account, twenty-five thousand dollars, actually, and naturally they questioned everybody they could think of. Since they couldn’t ask Harvey, they had to ask me, of course, but how could I help? Harvey was a one-man office — he didn’t even have a secretary. He kept his own books, made his own appointments, filed his own files....”
The frosting was crisscrossed with deep slashes by now. “Anyway, the police and this insurance man made my life hell for a while, but finally they went away. I haven’t heard any more about it, so that’s the end of it, I guess.”
“It must have been tough. All the questions —”
“How long had we been married? What kind of husband was he? Had I noticed any unusual behavior?” She dropped the fork and shoved her plate away, glaring at him as if he were the one asking the questions. “How dare they! Harvey was a brilliant accountant, I told them. A wonderful husband! We were married fifteen wonderful years. We were high-school sweethearts—I dropped out of college to marry him, for God’s sake. He was the love of my life. How dare they ask about...about the things they did! He was a good man. A good father.”
She used the same words her mother had used to describe her own father — and didn’t realize it, Cutter saw with amazement. And judging by the grim determination in her voice, he doubted they were any more true about Harvey Rhodes than they’d been about her father. Lisa certainly didn’t think so. Poor Lisa thought she was in her own Star Trek episode.
After twenty years, he could tell a truth from a lie any day of the week. Her ardent defense of her husband rang so false it set his teeth on edge. He’d bet his life something had been wrong with her marriage, but as for the money? Did she have it or know where it was? Of that, he couldn’t be so sure. Not yet.
Adrianne watched Cutter take the last bite of cake. Her stomach twisted in on itself, too sick with nerves to eat. She’d had no idea Lisa knew anything about Harvey and the money. Why in God’s name had Lisa chosen now, in front of Cutter, to ask about it? She focused on Cutter’s strong, broad fingers holding his fork, remembered the comforting feel of them on the back of her neck. Maybe Lisa had felt it was safer to bring up the subject with him there as a buffer. Something about Cutter seemed safe and secure — maybe it was the military posture or those steady eyes that told you he knew all about secrets.
For that matter, why had she talked to him about Harvey? She’d told no one except Blanche about the money, the police, the questions.... “You want to stay for supper?” she asked, suddenly dreading the conversation she’d have to have with Lisa. Sometimes it was a good idea to have a stranger around after all. “I’ve got enough lasagna to feed an army.”
“No, thank you,” he said politely. “In fact, I’d better call it a day.”
After Cutter left, rolling his cords and neatly stacking his tools, Adrianne wandered around the kitchen, stomach churning. Lately, whenever her mother insisted on recalling some wonderful memory of her childhood, she felt this mixture of sadness and anger, of rage too close to the surface. She’d thought she’d dealt with all the baggage of an alcoholic father years ago. She’d thought she’d come to terms with the past and the way her mother chose to handle it.
Blanche conveniently managed to forget the fights, the broken promises, the disappointment when her father had chosen the bottle over them. In Blanche’s southern-to-the-core world, the only appropriate response to How are you? was Fine, just fine.
Depression dragged her down while anxiety wound her up, a double-edged feeling that had been her constant companion these past months. Longer than that, she corrected herself, staring unseeing out the window over the sink. Ever since that first phone call with its soft breathing that never answered her hello. She’d asked Harvey about that one, and the next and the next. But after that, she’d just smiled and said everything was fine, just fine.
She turned from