Chapter 58

Sometime that evening, I found myself starting to cry.

I had mad spaghetti carbonara, and we ate in the moonlight on the deck with a bottle of Pinot noir. Gab put a cello concerto by Dvorak on the stereo, but eventually we switched to the Dixie chicks.

As we ate, Gab asked about where and how i had grown up.

I told him about my mother, and how my dad had left when I was just a kid; she had worked as a bookkeeper at the Emporium for twenty years. How I had practically raised my sister.

Mom died of breast cancer when she was only fifty.” The irony of this certain lily wasn’t lost on me.

What about your father? I want to know everything about you.”

I took a sip of wine, then told him how I’d only seen him twice since I was thirteeen. At my mothers funeral and the day I became a cop. He sat in the back, apart from everybody else.” Suddenly my blood became hot with long buried feelings. “What was he doing there? I looked up. My eyes moist. Why did he spoil it?”