Page 192 of The Woman By the Lake

“It’s my understanding, in the lawsuit, Kennedy asserted that you didn’t get along with Lincoln and your mom,” Harry commented.

“No, Jeff asserted that,” Tru contradicted. “They filed those papers, and Kennedy didn’t read them before she signed them. She lost her mind. Called me and apologized. Told me she read Jeff the riot act. But I don’t blame her. Honestly, there’s so much paperwork with that crap, it’s a wonder I got through my residency with all the stuff I had to wade through. I could see just signing your name and being done with it.”

“Right, so with all of that, I’m wondering why all of you kept this secret even after Lincoln died,” Harry noted.

“Because he told us to from the very beginning. Because he didn’t want everyone all over the globe talking shit about Mom and Dad. The books have been translated into over thirty languages, sheriff. It’d be everywhere. Also because he knew Jeff was a fuckup, and he wanted him to get help, not be sent to juvenile detention, but he wasn’t in a position, considering he was in prison, serving Jeff’s time, to get it for him. And if Lincoln was going to put himself that far out to protect their secret, and his son, I loved him too much to go against it.”

Couldn’t fault the guy for that.

Tru still had more.

“And I have to say, things didn’t get better after it all happened, because we went to live with Dad’s parents, and they were devoted to Dad more than Linc, in a way that, I loved them before they got in on the legal action, but even I thought it was weird. I think they sensed, too, that things were not as they seemed, even if they weren’t in on the secret. As such, they sensed Kennedy and I were their precious son’s children, and Jeff was their less precious son’s. Don’t ask me how. All I know is, they treated him differently, not spoiled and nurtured and cosseted. And I think that got under his skin, the reality he murdered two people who adored him got under his skin, and since Sharon somehow managed to stay close to him, she worked that angle too, because it corroborated all the shit she was filling his head with.”

“Did Jeff tell you this?” Harry queried.

Tru shook his head.

“Not back then, though Linc knew it, because Jeff told him. Even Kennedy didn’t know it, until about an hour ago at the hospital, when Jeff told us. I knew bits and pieces. Nothing about Sharon, except Lincoln’s concerns about her. I only knew that Mom and Dad were dead. For some reason Jeff shot them. Linc was going to go down for it. And we all had to look after Jeff because he was fourteen, he got his head mixed up, so he was troubled.” Again, he nearly spat his last word. “The rest of this is brand-new to me.”

And now they had the explanation behind his detached demeanor and the slow leaking in of emotion.

He was just finding this crap out.

Christ.

He had to feel like he’d been hit by a train.

Harry asked Riggs’s question when he said, “Why do you think Lincoln didn’t tell you about Sharon?”

“At first, because I was only seventeen,” Tru answered readily. “Then, I was in college, grad school, residency. Frankly, sheriff, Linc loved me, and his son took my mom and dad. Jeff had already fucked up my life. It was a lot, and all of this is a whole lot more, specifically, Jeff being weak enough to fall for her crap. So I don’t think he wanted dealing with Jeff fucking up my entire future.”

Lincoln Whitaker was clearly a solid guy.

Tru was still talking.

“Now, Jeff’s freaked that he’s finally going to have to face up to what he did to our family, and he’s freaked Sharon is going to throw him under the bus. And mark my words, she will. So, now, he lays this quagmire on Kennedy and me, asking us to help him out. Consequently, Kennedy is also freaked. Though, I don’t think she’s too broken up about Jeff. She’s pissed as hell he’s still been hanging with Sharon, when, after we lost Lincoln, he promised her he’d ceased all communication with her.”

“Why didn’t your uncle deal with his estate appropriately?” Harry asked another question Riggs wanted to know.

“Honestly?” Tru asked in return.

Harry nodded.

“I don’t know,” Tru said. “It’s been a total headache. I’m done with it. When he came to visit me after getting out of prison, he was all about us getting back to the lake. Pulling together the pieces of our family. Seeing to Jeff. Helping him heal. Like I had a lot of interest in doing that, which I didn’t. But I had interest in helping Lincoln pick up the threads of his life, and I was all in to do that. And if part of it was dealing with Jeff, okay. Linc was the only parent I had left, so I loved him enough, if that was what he needed, I was there. So when I got the call the day after he left me, telling me that he’d committed suicide, I was heartsore, sick with it, but also, I was utterly staggered.”

Harry didn’t give anything to that, like the fact that there was a reason to be surprised, seeing as his uncle might have been killed.

But at least that was an explanation of why the estate was a mess.

As far as Lincoln was concerned, he’d given instructions as to how to use the money on the kids while he was in prison.

Then, he was out, and since he was alive, and fresh from doing time for a crime he didn’t commit, he was intent on dealing with other things. Not seeing immediately to his estate, when he was only fifty years old, he thought he had a lot of life left to live.

Harry moved them in a different direction.

“Do you know what they were looking for at the lake?”

For the first time, straight out, the guy showed his feelings.

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