Page 113 of We Are All Guilty Here

Jude laughed. “Well done. It took me thirty years of therapy to come to that same conclusion.”

“Shit, don’t let anybody know a Clifton went to therapy. The entire family tree will burst into flames.”

“If only.” Jude jammed the wand into the tube of mascara several times to load it up. She went over her lashes twice to make sure it was caked on, then she used the pointy end of the safety pin to pick the lashes apart. “I remember how furious Myrna used to get when we did this.”

“You’re going to give yourself pink eye!” Celia screeched. She’d always done a good Myrna. “Jesus, I can’t believe what’s happened to her. It’s terrifying to watch.”

Jude applied a liberal layer of lipstick. “I used to worry about my bad knees, but now all I can think is maybe I have the same genetic marker.”

“Aunt Millie can tell you which side it came from.”

“Fucking hell.” Jude had thought she was beyond being surprised. “Millie’s still alive?”

“Cole calls her Aunt Spoiler because she can tell you how everybody died.” Celia passed Jude a paper towel. “The old bitch gets around better than I do. You know those Clifton women are too stubborn to die.”

Jude blotted her lips with the paper towel, making sure to smear it outside the lines. She asked, “How did I do?”

“You did great,” Celia said. “I wish I could wear eyeshadow again. I get in front of the mirror and it’s like trying to draw crayon on a ballsac.”

The floorboard creaked at the top of the stairs. Cole was back. He’d changed into his uniform. He asked Jude, “Why do you look like that?”

“Like a washed-up old whore?” She smiled at his reaction. “I knew Adam Huntsinger back in the day, sweetheart. He won’t talk to me if I’m too cleaned up.”

“Is that like a boomer thing?”

Celia ruffled his hair. “Gen X you little twerp.”

Jude gathered from Cole’s grin that this was a game they played. She couldn’t keep herself from smiling as she packed her make-up back into her purse. She touched her hand to Celia’s shoulder on her way out the door.

Inside the cruiser, Cole rested his elbow on the console and drove with two fingers on the wheel, the same way Gerald had. Jude felt an unexpected wave of sadness. She had mourned the loss of her father so many times over the years that his actual death had felt like an afterthought as she flew across the country. Now, sitting beside Cole, sharing his easy silence, she couldn’t help but be grateful that the things she had lost as a teenager had been returned in spades to the young man beside her.

She told him, “Go ahead. Ask me your questions.”

He was clearly ready. “Why did you join the FBI?”

Jude wasn’t going to tell him that she’d joined as a big fuck you to a father who’d told her she wasn’t built for the job, but she could cut close to the truth. “As a criminal psychologist, my choices were to either teach or start seeing patients. I was sick of being in school and I didn’t want to set up shop in an officebuilding or a hospital. I thought I could put my degree to more practical use with the FBI.”

“Did they recruit you?”

“That’s more the CIA’s thing.” She could tell from the flash of excitement in his eyes that he’d seen too many movies. “You’ve been told about your uncle Henry?”

“A little bit. It’s hard for Uncle Tommy to talk about anything. Like, at all.”

Jude knew that was not an exaggeration. “Gerald wanted Henry to take over as sheriff one day. From the moment he was born, Dad passed down all his wisdom, his techniques, his approaches. And I was right there listening alongside Henry. It gave me a head start when I joined the agency.”

“Papa taught Mom how to be a cop.” Cole had clearly picked up on the things Jude hadn’t said. “And he was teaching me. Or at least trying to. I didn’t listen like I should’ve.”

She watched his eyes glisten with tears. His jawbone jutted out from his cheek. Jude reached for his arm, but Cole moved his hand to the top of the steering wheel to put himself out of reach.

He asked, “Why did you stop drinking?”

“The reason most people do. I got tired of it. It stops being fun real quick, and then it’s just hangovers and feeling like shit and being terrible to people you love and doing all kinds of nasty things that you know you shouldn’t do, so you drink more to forget and start the cycle all over again.”

Cole was nodding. “That’s kind of what Papa said. That he got tired of it. And that he didn’t want to miss Mom and me growing up.”

Jude nodded, too, but his words threatened to reopen a very old wound. “What did you think of theMisguided Angelpodcast?”

“That it was wrong to go after my mom like that. She wasn’t in charge of the case. Papa was. And they had a lot of evidence. The jury heard it and agreed with what they found.”

---